Omoo: A Narrative of Adventures in the South Seas

Herman Melville

Penguin, Mar 27, 2007 - Fiction - 416 pages

Melville’s continuing adventures in the South Seas

Following the commercial and critical success of Typee, Herman Melville continued his series of South Sea adventure-romances with Omoo. Named after the Polynesian term for a rover, or someone who roams from island to island, Omoo chronicles the tumultuous events aboard a South Sea whaling vessel and is based on Melville’s personal experiences as a crew member on a ship sailing the Pacific. From recruiting among the natives for sailors to handling deserters and even mutiny, Melville gives a first-person account of life as a sailor during the nineteenth century filled with colorful characters and vivid descriptions of the far-flung locales of Polynesia.

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Contents

• Preface: 1
• Chapter: 7
• Chapter: 13
• Chapter: 19
• Proceedings of the Consul: 86
• The Consuls Departure: 91
• Outbreak of the Crew: 100
• We Enter the Harbor Jim the Pilot: 106
• Reception from the Frenchman: 116
• They Take Us Ashore: 123
• Proceedings of the French at Tahiti: 133
• Life at the Calabooza: 143
• We Are Carried before the Consul: 151
• Chapter 38: 159
• We Take unto Ourselves Friends: 168
• 43: 178
• A Missionarys Sermon with: 185
• Chapter 47: 195
• Chapter 49: 204
• Chapter 51: 212
• The Valley of Martair: 216
• Some Account of the Wild Cattle: 225
• Musquitoes: 232
• The HuntingFeast and a Visit: 240
• Mysterious: 247
• Tamai: 254
• The Hegira or Flight: 262
• The Journey Round the Beach: 270
• A DinnerParty in Imeeo: 276
• Chapter 70 Life at Loohooloo: 284
• 71: 287
• A Dealer in the Contraband: 291
• 74: 301
• An Island Jilt We Visit the Ship: 308
• Mrs Bell: 316
• 80: 323
• Which Ends the Book: 333
• Notes: 339

About the author

Herman Melville was born in August 1, 1819, in New York City, the son of a merchant. Only twelve when his father died bankrupt, young Herman tried work as a bank clerk, as a cabin-boy on a trip to Liverpool, and as an elementary schoolteacher, before shipping in January 1841 on the whaler Acushnet, bound for the Pacific. Deserting ship the following year in the Marquesas, he made his way to Tahiti and Honolulu, returning as ordinary seaman on the frigate United States to Boston, where he was discharged in October 1844. Books based on these adventures won him immediate success. By 1850 he was married, had acquired a farm near Pittsfield, Massachussetts (where he was the impetuous friend and neighbor of Nathaniel Hawthorne), and was hard at work on his masterpiece Moby-Dick.

Literary success soon faded; his complexity increasingly alienated readers. After a visit to the Holy Land in January 1857, he turned from writing prose fiction to poetry. In 1863, during the Civil War, he moved back to New York City, where from 1866-1885 he was a deputy inspector in the Custom House, and where, in 1891, he died. A draft of a final prose work, Billy Budd, Sailor, was left unfinished and uncollated, packed tidily away by his widow, where it remained until its rediscovery and publication in 1924.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Omoo: A Narrative of Adventures in the South Seas
• Author: Herman Melville
• Publisher: Penguin, 2007
• ISBN: 1101201479, 9781101201473
• Length: 416 pages
• Subjects: Fiction / Action & Adventure; Fiction / Literary; Travel / Australia & Oceania