biography
| sex:
| male
|
| lived:
| (1819–91)
|
| biography:
| Writer, born in New York City, New York, USA. He left school at 15 and worked as a bank clerk (1834), farmhand, and schoolteacher. In 1837 he served as a cabin boy on a ship bound for Liverpool. In 1841 he set sail for the South Pacific on the whaler Acushnet. He deserted at the Marquesas Is with a friend, and lived for a short time with the Typee cannibals, then escaped to Tahiti and enjoyed an idyllic period there before he enlisted in the US Navy and returned to Boston (1844). The publication of Typee (1846), based on his Marquesas Is adventure, and Omoo (1847), derived from his stay in Tahiti, made him famous. Later novels, Mardi (1849), Redburn (1849), and White-Jacket (1850), also based on his sea travels, were not as successful. He married Elizabeth Shaw (1847), moved to New York City, and travelled to England and Paris (1849). He settled in Pittsfield, MA and while writing Moby Dick there he befriended Nathaniel Hawthorne, dedicating his epic to him. Moby Dick (1851) is considered a masterpiece of American literature, but it was not well received by either readers or critics, who found it difficult and unsettling. The autobiographical Pierre (1852) also failed to win over the public. Discouraged, he travelled to the Holy Land in search of inspiration (1856–7). Such works as Israel Potter (1855), The Piazza Tales (1856), and The Confidence Man (1857) also found few readers, while his poetry would prove even more elusive. Withdrawing from the quest for literary recognition, in 1863 he moved to New York City again and worked there as a customs inspector (1866–85). His last significant work, Billy Bud, Foretopman, finished just before his death, was not published until 1924. He died poor and in obscurity, and it was the 1920s before Americans recognized his achievements and elevated him to rank as one of the greatest of all American creative artists. |
|
|
