~Herman Melville~

        Herman Melville was born on August 1 in 1819
in New York and died on September 28 in 1891
also in New York. He  was an American novelist,
short story writer, essayist and poet.
He is often classified as part of Dark romanticism.
His first three books gained much attention,
the first becoming a bestseller, but 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 (despite a vogue for his early sea novels
in Great Britain in the 1880s), but his longest novel,
Moby-Dick won recognition in the 20th century as
one of the chief literary masterpieces of both American
and world literature. His posthumous novella Billy Budd,
first published in 1924 and then in a revised
and corrected text in 1962 based on a close study
of the original manuscripts, rivals Moby-Dick in popularity,
and in particular has become a key text
of the field of law and literature.



Melville was the first writer to have his works collected
and published by the Library of America.
Ishmael introduces himself in the opening sentence
of the novel with the well-known line
"Call me Ishmael."

Bibliography:
-Typee: A Peep at Polynesian Life (1846)
-Omoo: A Narrative of Adventures
in the South Seas (1847)
-Mardi: And a Voyage Thither (1849)
-Redburn: His First Voyage (1849)
-White-Jacket: or, The World in a Man-of-War (1850)
-Moby-Dick (1851)
-Pierre: or, The Ambiguities (1852)
-Israel Potter: His Fifty Years of Exile (1855)
-The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade (1857)
-Billy Budd, Sailor: An Inside Narrative (1924)

Herman Melville is geboren op 1 augustus 1819 in
New York, en is gestorven op 28 september 1891
in New York, Hij was een Amerikaanse schrijver
van romans, essays en gedichten.
Zijn moeder kwam voort uit het geslacht Gansevoort,
een belangrijke Nederlands-Amerikaanse familie.
In zijn tijd waren Zuidzee avonturen een populair
literair genre in de Verenigde Staten,
maar bij zijn dood was hij alweer vrijwel vergeten.
In de jaren 20 van de 20e eeuw werd zijn
langste roman Moby Dick or The Whale herontdekt,
evenals Billy Budd.
Juist Moby Dick uit 1851 had tijdens zijn leven het
begin gemarkeerd van de afname van zijn populariteit.
Tegenwoordig wordt Melville beschouwd als één
van de belangrijke figuren uit de Amerikaanse literatuur.

Over het verhaal:
De mythische strijd van kapitein Ahab met de
witte walvis die hem ooit zijn been heeft
afgebeten wordt verteld door de enige overlevende,
die ons in de beroemde openingszin opdraagt hem Ismaël
te noemen. Een meeslepend geromantiseerde
encyclopedie van de zee, de walvisvaart, de potvis,
de mens en de wraak.
”Noem mij maar Ismaël”

Moby Dick heeft vanaf 1930 al zeker
vijf verfilmingen en TV-bewerkingen gehad.

-Richard Basehart, in the 1956 film adaptation
in which Gregory Peck plays Ahab.

 

-Henry Thomas, in the 1998 television adaptation
in which Patrick Stewart plays Ahab. 

 
-Tim Guinee (voice) in the 2000 animated movie
in which Rod Steiger provides the voice of Ahab.

  

Bibliography:
-Typee: A Peep at Polynesian Life (1846)
-Omoo: A Narrative of Adventures
in the South Seas (1847)
-Mardi: And a Voyage Thither (1849)
-Redburn: His First Voyage (1849)
-White-Jacket: or, The World in a Man-of-War (1850)
-Moby-Dick (1851)
-Pierre: or, The Ambiguities (1852)
-Israel Potter: His Fifty Years of Exile (1855)
-The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade (1857)
-Billy Budd, Sailor: An Inside Narrative (1924)

The illustrated book is from my collection!
Het geïllustreerde boek is uit eigen collectie!