When Moby-Dick was published in 1851, first in London as The Whale and weeks later in New York, it was not a success. Herman Melville had been popular a few years earlier for adventure stories drawn from his time in the South Seas, such as Typee. Readers expecting more of the same got a sprawling, strange book that mixed a sea story with chapters on whale anatomy, philosophy, stage directions and sermons.
The reception
Some reviewers admired its power. Many were baffled or hostile. The British edition, by a printing mistake, left out the epilogue, so some critics complained that the book was narrated by a man who apparently died in the ending. In Melville’s lifetime, the book sold only about 3,000 copies. His next novel, Pierre, did even worse, and his career as a popular novelist effectively ended. He spent nearly two decades working as a customs inspector in New York.
Forgotten
When Melville died in 1891, he was so obscure that one New York newspaper obituary reportedly misspelled the title of his best-known book. Moby-Dick was out of print.
The revival
The rescue began around the hundredth anniversary of his birth in 1919. Scholars and critics, notably Raymond Weaver, whose 1921 biography helped spark the “Melville Revival,” argued that the book was a masterpiece that had been far ahead of its time. Writers who had come of age with modernism, which was comfortable with fragmentation and mixed forms, recognized something of their own in it. D. H. Lawrence praised it. Melville’s unfinished novella Billy Budd, found among his papers, was published in 1924.
Why it matters
Today Moby-Dick is a fixture of “great American novel” lists, and its opening line, “Call me Ishmael,” is among the most famous in literature. Its story is also a comfort to every writer whose ambitious book was misunderstood. Sometimes the readers have to catch up.
Sources: Moby-Dick, Wikipedia; Herman Melville, Wikipedia; Moby Dick; Or, The Whale, Project Gutenberg.
