Today the Google Doodle honors Herman Melville‘s masterpiece, Moby Dick, on this the 161st anniversary of its publication. Ironically, the book that has garnered Melville immortality also effectively ruined his career. Known as a writer of semi-autobiographical stories, neither the critics nor the reader knew what to make of Moby Dick. Moby Dick and all of Melville’s other books as well would be out of print for thirty years by the time of his death in 1891. Moby Dick would not become broadly popular until the “Melville Revival” of the 1920s.
Herman Melville Books: Moby Dick Google Doodle
Also check out the Moby Dick Big Read. Various actors and writers have been reading a chapter a day and posting them on-line. Tilda Swinton reads Chapter 1 and so on. They are up to Chapter 33, though the previous chapters are all available on the site.
Rick,
I read that when the novel was sent to England for review, the last chapter somehow was left out. The result was a bad review. Instead of checking into the matter, the American press followed the English example. Poor Herman.
notice the typo in the 1:04 minute tribute? anyhow, i’ve seen a 1920s version of MDick that has rockwell kent’s name on the cover and does not even mention melville. kent–who lived on staten island (richmond terrace) at one point, did the illustrations for that edition of the novel. last thing, it’s almost 1130 pm and although i’ve seen the google page several dozen times today, it’s only now, thanks to you, that i notice what the design is.
I had missed the typo Will. You are referring to “sperm wale”? Or was there another?
Barbara, Melville did apparently have publishing problems but his poor reviews do not appear to be solely related to them . The reviews were mixed from praise to condemnation. The related and probably biggest problem was that the book didn’t sell well
Thanks for your interesting article on Herman Melville! Because of his 194th birthday today I’m looking for more interesting articles about him and his writings.
If you are interested, last year we also published a brief article on Herman Melville entitled ‘Herman Melville’s Nightmare’ in our blog at http://yovisto.blogspot.de/2012/08/herman-melvilles-nightmare.html
Best,
Harald
Hello all. It turns out that the publication history of Moby-Dick provides an object lesson on how a creative work can be reissued, reedited, and re-created in numerous ways. In other ways, it got mashed-up. A Library of Congress colleague and I made an extensive (epic – given the status of Melville’s work) presentation on this topic at an American Library Association conference in 2010.
Be prepared for an interesting ride through the history of science, biology, and library science. I recommend that you download the PDF and treat the file like a flipbook. Questions? Write me at rmur@loc.gov.
BTW: Harald – take a look a the **Northwestern-Newberry** critical edition of Moby-Dick. There are a lot of accompanying articles that you will find informative.