Monday, July 22, 2019

Tuckerman aka Knick on Israel Potter

As shown in a previous post, Melville's friend Henry T. Tuckerman contributed literary letters from New York City to the Boston Evening Transcript, regularly published over the pseudonym "Knick." The letter from Tuckerman aka "Knick" dated February 23, 1855 features a friendly plug for the forthcoming book version of Israel Potter as "delectable reading." (The serial version concluded in the March 1855 issue of Putnam's Monthly.) Not in Herman Melville: The Contemporary Reviews, ed. Brian Higgins and Hershel Parker (Cambridge University Press, 1995; paperback 2009), where the earliest notice of the book version is from the New Bedford Mercury on March 12, 1855.
Melville's new story, which has appeared in Putnam's Magazine, "Israel Potter," will be published in one neat volume, this week. Consecutively it reads well, and has some highly spirited and adventurous scenes, with a genuine American flavor. Paul Jones and nautical romance, when treated by such a writer as Melville, cannot fail to make delectable reading.  --Boston Evening Transcript, February 27, 1855; found in digitized newspaper archives at GenealogyBank.
Boston Evening Transcript - February 27, 1855 via GenealogyBank

The letter from "Knick" published in the Boston Evening Transcript on November 30, 1855 alludes to "Benito Cereno" in a survey of the December Putnam's:
"Melville's story is continued...."
Melville's 1856 volume The Piazza Tales gets this advance notice by "Knick" in the Boston Evening Transcript of April 4, 1856:
"The same house [Dix & Edwards] will publish soon the 'Piazza Tales,' by Melville."
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