Herman Melville

Mariner and Mystic

Raymond M. Weaver

• Publisher: Aeneas Press
• Year: 2026
• Topic: Literature
• eBook ISBN:
  9785486031458
• Subtopic: Literary Biographies
• Index: Literature

The first modern life of Melville, written when he had been out of print for a generation and his masterpiece was remembered, if at all, as a whaling book. Weaver went through the family papers, found the manuscript of Billy Budd in a tin box, and published it. The Melville revival starts here. This edition binds 60 plates of maritime and moonlight painting, among them Turner, Aivazovsky and Winslow Homer, alongside six illustrations restored and coloured.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Copyright
• Herman Melville
• Chapter I Devil’s Advocate
• Chapter II Ghosts
• Melville’s Grandfathers
• Chapter III Parents and Early Years
• Maria Gansevoort Melville
• Chapter IV A Substitute for Pistol and Ball
• Chapter V Discoveries on Two Continents
• Chapter VI Pedagogy, Pugilism and Letters
• For the Democratic Press Fragments from a Writing Desk No. 1
• For the Democratic Press Fragments from a Writing Desk No. 2
• Chapter VII Blubber and Mysticism
• Chapter VIII Leviathan
• Chapter IX The Pacific
• Evangelizing Polynesia
• Chapter X Man-Eating Epicures—The Marquesas
• Richard Tobias Greene
• Chapter XI Mutiny and Missionaries—Tahiti
• Chapter XII On Board a Man-Of-War
• Chapter XIII Into the Racing Tide
• Chapter XIV Across the Atlantic Again
• Chapter XV A Neighbour of Hawthorne’s
• Art
• Chapter XVI The Great Refusal
• Chapter XVII The Long Quietus
• The Apparition
• Bibliography
• Contributions to Magazines, Etc.
• About the Author