Correspondence

Herman Melville, Lynn Horth

Northwestern University Press, 1993 - Literary Collections - 923 pages

"Presented here is one sequence are the 313 texts, newly edited by Lynn Horth, that are known to survive of letters by Melville, and for the first time, in a separate sequence, the 88 texts that are known to survive of letters to him. Taken together, however, these surviving texts provide only a spotty chronicle of Melville's outer, and intermittent revelations of his inner, life. They provide so little not only because by all indications he wrote relatively few, and mostly sparse, letters but also because so many of those he did write, and receive, have been lost or destroyed. He himself, as he declared, habitually destroyed letters he received, including those he had prized from Hawthorne; and his daughter or some other too-proper descendant in the twentieth century lamentably destroyed his numerous letters to his wife." "Consequently, to fill the gaps within the correspondence, 542 editorial entries are chronologically interspersed for letters both by and to Melville for which no full text has been located but for which some evidence survives. These entries, like the editorial headnotes for the known letters, flesh out the specific historical and biographical contexts for the unlocated letters. Both supply Horth's full annotations, placing circumstances, persons, and allusions, from a wide range of documentary and scholarly sources, and drawing upon family archives of both Melville and his wife, including the recently recovered portion, now in the New York Public Library, of a trove preserved by his sister Augusta.".

What people are saying

User Review -

This book is the most amazing book on Herman Melville you will ever find.

Contents

• Principal Persons and Places: 543
• 1840s: 564
• EDITORIAL APPENDIX: 767
• HISTORICAL NOTE: 773
• NOTE ON THE TEXT: 813
• CoNJECTURAL AND ALTERNATIVE READINGS: 843
• MELVILLES HAND: 849
• CALENDAR OF MELVILLES CORRESPONDENCE 86 I: 861
• INDEX: 889

About the author

Herman Melville (August 1, 1819 – September 28, 1891) was an American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and poet. He is best known for his novel Moby-Dick. His first three books gained much contemporary attention (the first, Typee, becoming a bestseller), and after a fast-blooming literary success in the late 1840s, his popularity declined precipitously in the mid-1850s and never recovered during his lifetime. When he died in 1891, he was almost completely forgotten. It was not until the "Melville Revival" in the early 20th century that his work won recognition, especially Moby-Dick, which was hailed as one of the literary masterpieces of both American and world literature. He was the first writer to have his works collected and published by the Library of America.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Correspondence; Volume 14 of Melville Series; Volume 14 of Melville, Herman: [The writings]; Volume 14 of The Northwestern-Newberry Edition of the Writings of Herman Melville; Volume 14 of The writings of Herman Melville, Herman Melville; Volume 14 of Works (Melville, Herman, 1819-1891); Volume 14 of Writings of Herman Melville 99-0031820-X, Herman Melville
• Authors: Herman Melville, Lynn Horth
• Editor: Lynn Horth
• Edition: illustrated
• Publisher: Northwestern University Press, 1993
• ISBN: 0810109956, 9780810109957
• Length: 923 pages
• Subjects: Literary Collections / Letters