About the Author
Herman Melville was born in 1819 in New York City to wealthy parents of New English and Dutch origin. When his father died a bankrupt, Melville left school, aged 12, to work as a bank clerk. He attended night school and became a teacher before signing on as a merchant seaman. In 1841, he boarded the whaling ship “Acushnet”. After a year and a half, Melville jumped ship and spent a month among a tribe in the Marquesas Islands, before making his way home via Hawaii and Peru. In New York, he published several novels, to instant success. His meeting with Nathaniel Hawthorne in 1850, while he was writing Moby-Dick, was a pivotal moment and filled him with inspiration. Moby-Dick's reception was mixed, and his following novel Pierre was a failure. Melville's reputation faded and his later years were shadowed by his son's suicide and his own ill-health. He worked as an inspector in the New York Customs House for nearly 20 years until his death in 1891.