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Redburn
''Redburn: His First Voyage'' is the fourth book by the American writer Herman Melville, first published in London in 1849. The book is semi-autobiographical and recounts the adventures of a refined youth among coarse and brutal sailors and the seedier areas of Liverpool. Melville wrote ''Redburn'' in less than ten weeks. While one scholar describes it as "arguably his funniest work", scholar F. O. Matthiessen calls it "the most moving of its author's books before ''Moby-Dick''". Plot Unable to find employment at home, young Wellingborough Redburn signs on the ''Highlander'', a merchantman out of New York City bound for Liverpool, England. Representing himself as the "son of a gentleman" and expecting to be treated as such, he discovers that he is just a green hand, a "boy", the lowest rank on the ship, assigned all the duties no other sailor wants, like cleaning out the "pigpen", a longboat that serves as a shipboard sty. The first mate promptly nicknames him "Buttons" for th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Herman Melville
Herman Melville (Name change, born Melvill; August 1, 1819 – September 28, 1891) was an American novelist, short story writer, and poet of the American Renaissance (literature), American Renaissance period. Among his best-known works are ''Moby-Dick'' (1851); ''Typee'' (1846), a romanticized account of his experiences in Polynesia; and ''Billy Budd, Billy Budd, Sailor'', a posthumously published novella. At the time of his death Melville was not well known to the public, but 1919, the centennial of his birth, was the starting point of a #Melville revival and Melville studies, Melville revival. ''Moby-Dick'' would eventually be considered one of the great American novels. Melville was born in New York City, the third child of a prosperous merchant whose death in 1832 left the family in dire financial straits. He took to sea in 1839 as a common sailor on the merchant ship ''St. Lawrence'' and then, in 1841, on the whaler ''Acushnet'', but he jumped ship in the Marquesas I ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nautical Fiction
Nautical fiction, frequently also naval fiction, sea fiction, naval adventure fiction or maritime fiction, is a genre of literature with a setting on or near the sea, that focuses on the human relationship to the sea and sea voyages and highlights nautical culture in these environments. The settings of nautical fiction vary greatly, including merchant ships, liners, naval ships, fishing vessels, life boats, etc., along with sea ports and fishing villages. When describing nautical fiction, scholars most frequently refer to novels, novellas, and short stories, sometimes under the name of sea novels or sea stories. These works are sometimes adapted for the theatre, film and television. The development of nautical fiction follows with the development of the English language novel and while the tradition is mainly British and North American, there are also significant works from literatures in Japan, France, Scandinavia, and other Western traditions. Though the treatment of themes an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
White Jacket
''White-Jacket; or, The World in a Man-of-War'' is the fifth book by American writer Herman Melville, first published in London in 1850. The book is based on the author's fourteen months' service in the United States Navy, aboard the frigate USS ''Neversink'' (actually ). Although early biographers of Melville assumed the account was reliably autobiographical, scholars have shown that much in the book was taken and transformed from popular sea books. Overview Based on Melville's experiences as a common seaman aboard the frigate from 1843 to 1844, stories that other sailors told him, and earlier sea books, the novel is severely critical of virtually every aspect of American naval life and thus qualifies as Melville's most politically strident work. At the time, though, the one thing that journalists and politicians focused on in the novel was its graphic descriptions of flogging and the horrors caused by its arbitrary use; in fact, because Harper & Bros. made sure the book got i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Liverpool
Liverpool is a port City status in the United Kingdom, city and metropolitan borough in Merseyside, England. It is situated on the eastern side of the River Mersey, Mersey Estuary, near the Irish Sea, north-west of London. With a population of (in ), Liverpool is the administrative, cultural and economic centre of the Liverpool City Region, a combined authority, combined authority area with a population of over 1.5 million. Established as a borough in Lancashire in 1207, Liverpool became significant in the late 17th century when the Port of Liverpool was heavily involved in the Atlantic slave trade. The port also imported cotton for the Textile manufacture during the British Industrial Revolution, Lancashire textile mills, and became a major departure point for English and Irish emigrants to North America. Liverpool rose to global economic importance at the forefront of the Industrial Revolution in the 19th century and was home to the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, firs ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Spontaneous Human Combustion
Spontaneous human combustion (SHC) is the pseudoscientific concept of the spontaneous combustion of a living (or recently deceased) human body without an apparent external source of ignition on the body. In addition to reported cases, descriptions of the alleged phenomenon appear in literature, and both types have been observed to share common characteristics in terms of circumstances and the remains of the victim. Scientific investigations have attempted to analyze reported instances of SHC and have resulted in hypotheses regarding potential causes and mechanisms, including victim behavior and habits, alcohol consumption, and proximity to potential sources of ignition, as well as the behavior of fires that consume melted fats. Natural explanations, as well as unverified natural phenomena, have been proposed to explain reports of SHC. The current scientific consensus is that purported cases of SHC involve overlooked external sources of ignition. Overview "Spontaneous human co ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
White-Jacket
''White-Jacket; or, The World in a Man-of-War'' is the fifth book by American writer Herman Melville, first published in London in 1850. The book is based on the author's fourteen months' service in the United States Navy, aboard the frigate USS ''Neversink'' (actually ). Although early biographers of Melville assumed the account was reliably autobiographical, scholars have shown that much in the book was taken and transformed from popular sea books. Overview Based on Melville's experiences as a common seaman aboard the frigate from 1843 to 1844, stories that other sailors told him, and earlier sea books, the novel is severely critical of virtually every aspect of American naval life and thus qualifies as Melville's most politically strident work. At the time, though, the one thing that journalists and politicians focused on in the novel was its graphic descriptions of flogging and the horrors caused by its arbitrary use; in fact, because Harper & Bros. made sure the book got i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Raymond Weaver
Raymond Melbourne Weaver (1888 – April 4, 1948) was a professor of English and comparative literature at Columbia University in 1916–1948, and a literary scholar best known for publishing ''Herman Melville: Mariner and Mystic'', the first full biography of American author Herman Melville (1819–1891) in 1921 and editing Melville's works. Weaver's scholarly credentials, training, and persuasiveness were important in launching the " Melville Revival" of the 1920s that brought Melville from obscurity to wide recognition. Weaver was an influential teacher. He published a novel, wrote introductions for editions of American fiction, book reviews, and literary essays, but never published another scholarly book after his book on Melville. Discovery of Melville Weaver was born in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1888. In 1909 when Weaver was an undergraduate, he came across Melville's first book, ''Typee'', but "stopped at the beginning," as he later wrote, and did not return to Melville fo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mardi
''Mardi: and a Voyage Thither'' is the third book by American writer Herman Melville, first published in London in 1849. Beginning as a travelogue in the vein of the author's two previous efforts, the adventure story gives way to a romance story, which in its turn gives way to a philosophical quest. Overview ''Mardi'' is Melville's first purely fictional work. Although Melville and his publishers presented his first two books, '' Typee'' and '' Omoo'', as nonfiction, enough critics were able to identify plagiarism in them (especially ''Typee'') from other works, both fiction and nonfiction, that their veracity and Melville's integrity were always points of contention. As a preface to ''Mardi'', Melville wrote somewhat ironically that his first two books were nonfiction but disbelieved; by the same pattern he hoped the fiction book would be accepted as fact. Much as did ''Typee'' and ''Omoo'', ''Mardi'' details the travels of an American sailor who abandons a whaling vessel to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Novels By Herman Melville
A novel is an extended work of narrative fiction usually written in prose and published as a book. The word derives from the for 'new', 'news', or 'short story (of something new)', itself from the , a singular noun use of the neuter plural of ''novellus'', diminutive of ''novus'', meaning 'new'. According to Margaret Doody, the novel has "a continuous and comprehensive history of about two thousand years", with its origins in the Ancient Greek and Roman novel, Medieval Chivalric romance, and the tradition of the Italian Renaissance novella.Margaret Anne Doody''The True Story of the Novel'' New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1996, rept. 1997, p. 1. Retrieved 25 April 2014. The ancient romance form was revived by Romanticism, in the historical romances of Walter Scott and the Gothic novel. Some novelists, including Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Ann Radcliffe, and John Cowper Powys, preferred the term ''romance''. Such romances should not be confused with th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1849 American Novels
Events January–March * January 1 – France begins issue of the Ceres series, the nation's first postage stamps. * January 5 – Hungarian Revolution of 1848: The Austrian army, led by Alfred I, Prince of Windisch-Grätz, enters in the Hungarian capitals, Buda and Pest. The Hungarian government and parliament flee to Debrecen. * January 8 – Hungarian Revolution of 1848: Romanian armed groups massacre 600 unarmed Hungarian civilians, at Nagyenyed.Hungarian HistoryJanuary 8, 1849 And the Genocide of the Hungarians of Nagyenyed/ref> * January 13 ** Second Anglo-Sikh War – Battle of Tooele: British forces retreat from the Sikhs. ** The Colony of Vancouver Island is established. * January 21 ** General elections are held in the Papal States. ** Hungarian Revolution of 1848: At Nagyszeben (now Sibiu in Romania)– The Hungarian army in Transylvania, led by Josef Bem, is defeated by the Austrians, led by Anton Puchner. * January 23 – Elizabeth Blackwell is awarded he ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bleak House
''Bleak House'' is a novel by English author Charles Dickens, first published as a 20-episode Serial (literature), serial between 12 March 1852 and 12 September 1853. The novel has many characters and several subplots, and is told partly by the novel's heroine, Esther Summerson, and partly by an omniscient narrator. At the centre of ''Bleak House'' is a long-running legal case in the Court of Chancery, ''Jarndyce and Jarndyce'', which comes about because a testator has written several conflicting wills. In a preface to the 1853 first edition, Dickens said there were many actual precedents for his fictional case. One such was probably ''Thellusson v Woodford'', in which a will read in 1797 was contested and not determined until 1859. Though many in the legal profession criticised Dickens's satire as exaggerated, ''Bleak House'' helped support a judicial reform movement that culminated in the enactment of Judicature Acts, legal reform in the 1870s. Some scholars debate when ''Ble ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Charles Dickens
Charles John Huffam Dickens (; 7 February 1812 – 9 June 1870) was an English novelist, journalist, short story writer and Social criticism, social critic. He created some of literature's best-known fictional characters, and is regarded by many as the greatest novelist of the Victorian era.. His works enjoyed unprecedented popularity during his lifetime and, by the 20th century, critics and scholars had recognised him as a literary genius. His novels and short stories are widely read today. Born in Portsmouth, Dickens left school at age 12 to work in a boot-blacking factory when his father John Dickens, John was incarcerated in a debtors' prison. After three years, he returned to school before beginning his literary career as a journalist. Dickens edited a weekly journal for 20 years; wrote 15 novels, five novellas, hundreds of short stories and nonfiction articles; lectured and performed Penny reading, readings extensively; was a tireless letter writer; and campaigned vigor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
