This first volume of The Library of America's three-volume edition of the complete prose works of Herman Melville includes three romances of the South Seas. Typee and Omoo , based on the young Melville's experiences on a whaling ship, are exuberant accounts of the idyllic life among the cannibals in Polynesia. They remained his most popular works well into the 20th century. Mardi (the world in Polynesian) is a mixture of love story, adventure, and political allegory, set on a mythical Pacific island, that looks forward ...
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This first volume of The Library of America's three-volume edition of the complete prose works of Herman Melville includes three romances of the South Seas. Typee and Omoo , based on the young Melville's experiences on a whaling ship, are exuberant accounts of the idyllic life among the cannibals in Polynesia. They remained his most popular works well into the 20th century. Mardi (the world in Polynesian) is a mixture of love story, adventure, and political allegory, set on a mythical Pacific island, that looks forward to the complexities of Moby-Dick . Together, these three romances give early evidence of the genius and daring that make Melville the master novelist of the sea and a precursor of modernist literature. Two companion volumes-- Herman Melville: Redburn, White-Jacket, Moby-Dick and Herman Melville: Pierre, Israel Potter, The Piazza Tales , The Confidence Man, Uncollected Prose, and Billy Budd complete this edition of Melville's prose. LIBRARY OF AMERICA is an independent nonprofit cultural organization founded in 1979 to preserve our nation's literary heritage by publishing, and keeping permanently in print, America's best and most significant writing. The Library of America series includes more than 300 volumes to date, authoritative editions that average 1,000 pages in length, feature cloth covers, sewn bindings, and ribbon markers, and are printed on premium acid-free paper that will last for centuries.
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Good in Good jacket. Size: 5x1x8; The binding is clean and tight with minor shelf wear. Wear & soiling on edges of text block. Pages tanning & toning with age, otherwise Text and images unmarked. Light moisture waviness on several pages. Dj lightly worn & toned in a mylar cover.
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Used Good in Good jacket. Dust Jacket has edge and corner wear, some scuffing, but still intact. Dust Jacket is wrapped in mylar Brodart covering, which is removable. Front and back covers have wear to edges and corners. Spine intact, some wear. Binding is intact. Pages are generally clean with edge or corner wear. Library stamps on top edge and half-title page. Firefly Bookstore sells items online and in our store front. We try to add images and descriptions when we can, but if you need additional information or photos of the books we list, please contact us.
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Very Good in Slipcase jacket. Size: 5x1x8; Second printing, stated. Clean and crisp in dark blue cloth boards, with a matching satin ribbon bound in as bookmark. Offwhite slipcase with gold detailing has minor shelf soiling, otherwise whole and in good condition.
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Very Good. Very Good condition. Slipcase Very Good. A copy that may have a few cosmetic defects. May also contain light spine creasing or a few markings such as an owner's name, short gifter's inscription or light stamp.
Among the early products of the wonderful Library of America Series were three volumes devoted to the novels of Herman Melville. This volume consists of Melville's first three novels, Typee(1846), Omoo(1847) and Mardi (1849)
Melville's novels are based, more or less loosely, on his life at sea. The first two novels describe voyages to the Marquesas and to Tahiti. They are filled with lush descriptions of scenery, and tales of adventure. Of the two, Typee is filled with encounters with cannibals and Polynesian maidens while Omoo presents a wider canvas of characters and scenes. Both books emphasize the sexual openness and relative simplicity of Polynesian life as compared to life in the United States and both books are critical as well of attempts to Christianize the islanders. These are not unusual themes today and probably were not as radical in the 1840s as one might suppose. The stories are well told and the descriptions alluring. These books made Melville's reputation as a young writer.
Mardi, however, is the gem of this collection. Its relationship to the earlier novels can be analogized, say, to the relationship between the young Beethoven's first symphony on the one hand and the growth of language and thought in the second and third symphonies on the other hand. Melville prefaces the book with the note that his first two books were fact-based but were received with "incredulity" while Mardi was pure romance and "might be received for a verity." (Little likelihood of that)
The book is written in a baroque, ornate, and bravado style that Melville would bring to completion in Moby Dick. It is an allegory involving the search for Yillah, a strange, mythical maiden, through the seas of Mardi -- Polynesian for "the world". The narrator is accompanied by King Media, by the philosopher Babbalanja, the singer Yoomi, and the historian Mohi. There are many wonderfully exasperating discussions. They wander far and wide in search of Yillah and in there wandering we here many religious allegories and many depictions of the Europe and United States of Melville's own time. There are shadowy maidens, villains, long scenes in the empty wide ocean, and pages of Melvillian thought and bluster.
The book is high American romanticism and presents a religious and personal quest by the narrator that resounds of similar quests by many in our own day. For example, there is a famous unfinished novel of the religious quest called Mount Analogue by a French writer, Daumal, which fits quite compactly into just a few chapters of Mardi. Mardi is a long, maddeningly difficult book but worth the effort.
Americans can learn about themselves by learning about their literature and this book is a fitting place to start (or continue). For those with the patience, it is worth reading these books in order (perhaps with other reading sandwiched in between) to discover the growth of a great and troubled American writer and chronicler of the inward life, as well as of sea journeys.
