Melvilliana: Reviews and Notices

Items below are all available online at the great site Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers, co-produced by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Library of Congress. So far there's nothing in the way of a critical notice that I can find about The Confidence-Man (1857) in either the Herald or the Tribune. Most but not all of the critical notices below are transcribed or listed in Herman Melville: The Contemporary Reviews (CR), edited by Brian Higgins and Hershel Parker. As mentioned in the previous melvilliana post Early favorable notices of Typee and Omoo, CR lacks the New York Herald items about Typee and Omoo. Also not listed in CR: the notice and excerpts of "Israel Potter" in Putnam's, given in the New York Herald on August 6, 1854.

TYPEE - New York Daily Tribune - April 4, 1846; signed with star * mark = Margaret Fuller.

DEATH OF GANSEVOORT MELVILLE - New York Herald - June 4, 1847; with mention of Herman Melville "the author of an extraordinary book called 'Typee.' "
Nominates N. P. Willis to fill the suddenly vacant post of Secretary of Legation in London.

TYPEE - New York Herald - April 28, 1846; notice headed "THE NEW ROBINSON CRUSOE"

OMOO - New York Herald - May 24, 1847

OMOO - New York Daily Tribune - June 21, 1847; signed "H. G." = Horace Greeley

Married "In Boston, on the 4th inst., by the Rev. Dr. Young, Mr. HERMAN MELVILLE, of New York, to Miss ELIZABETH K. SHAW, daughter of Chief Justice Shaw, of the former place." --New York Herald - August 6, 1847

[TYPEE AND OMOO - New York Daily Tribune Supplement - October 2, 1847;
Signed "W. O. B." = William O. Bourne]

Macready and Forrest - New York Herald - May 9, 1849

MARDI - New York Daily Tribune - May 10, 1849; signed "R." = George Ripley

REDBURN - New York Daily Tribune - December 1, 1849; signed "R." = George Ripley

WHITE-JACKET New York Daily Tribune - April 5, 1850; signed "R." = George Ripley

MOBY-DICK - New York Daily Tribune - November 22, 1851; unsigned but attributed in Melville scholarship to George Ripley, Tribune literary editor from 1849 to 1880.

PIERRE - New York Herald - July 29, 1852; early negative notice of "repulsive" gothic plot: "Mr. Melville has written himself out."

PIERRE - New York Herald - September 18, 1852; unsigned.

"CHARLES LE CHAUVE" in the New York Herald - September 4, 1853; Notices among Berkshire celebrities "Herman Melville who, if he would understand to write about the things of this world, would be as popular as Dickens, but whose later works are such that neither gods nor men, nor columns can tolerate. He lives at Pittsfield, and has a beautiful place there."

ISRAEL POTTER - Putnam's magazine for July 1854 - New York Herald July 16, 1854
ISRAEL POTTER - Putnam's for August reviewed with excerpts on George III and Benjamin Franklin - New York Herald - August 6, 1854
ISRAEL POTTER - Putnam's for September - New York Herald August 27, 1854
ISRAEL POTTER - Putnam's for March - New York Herald March 11, 1855;
"terminates gloomily" but "the best of Herman Melville's novels."