Wellcome Melville

Melville's Typee was first published in London by John Murray as the Narrative of a Four Months' Residence Among the Natives of a Valley of the Marquesas Islands; or, A Peep at Polynesian Life. In the Preface, the author admits he lost track of time. Melville actually spent four weeks on Nuku Hiva.



Available courtesy of Internet Archive, this copy of the first British edition is a digitized volume in the Wellcome Library.

For further study:

• Manuscripts and Archives Division, The New York Public Library. "Typee manuscript" The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1845. http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/6cf01560-6b83-0133-a129-00505686d14e 

• Herman Melville - John Murray Archive

• Charles Roberts Anderson, Melville in the South Seas. Columbia University Press, 1939.

• Wilson Heflin, Herman Melville's Whaling Years. Edited by Mary K. Bercaw Edwards and Thomas Farel Heffernan. Vanderbilt University Press, 2004.

• Mary K. Bercaw Edwards, Questioning Typee. Leviathan Volume 11, Issue 2 (June 2009) pages 24-42.