A previous post gave the text of
Melville's 1860 memo from published transcriptions by a distinguished line of Melville scholars including Meade Minnigerode, Eleanor Melville Metcalf in
Cycle and Epicycle, and Jay Leyda in
The Melville Log. In print, Hershel Parker has reviewed the scholarship on Melville's detailed instructions for publication of his 1860 "Poems" in
Melville Biography: An Inside Narrative. Now we can read Melville's long memo of May 22, 1860 in the neat handwriting of his wife Elizabeth Shaw Melville,
courtesy of The New York Public Library.
Melville's manuscript book of "Poems" was rejected by at least two different publishers, so Melville never got to enjoy "the publication of a first volume of verses" as he elaborately planned for it in 1860. But later versions of some verses are possibly to be found in Melville's 1891 volume
Timoleon, Etc., especially in the section titled "Fruit of Travel Long Ago." In
Melville: The Making of the Poet and the "Historical Note" for the Northwestern-Newberry edition of
Melville's Published Poems, Hershel Parker suggests that earlier versions of Melville's surviving longer poems "Naples in the Time of Bomba" and "At the Hostelry" might also have graced the 1860 book of "Poems."
We see again, here in an original document, Melville trying to conceal his authorship of the book "Piddledee" -- certainly his least-studied work, and one that ought to be able to generate two or three good PhD theses at least.
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