Typee (Magill’s Survey of American Literature, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Herman Melville
- First Published: 1846
- Type of Work: Novel
- Genres: Long fiction, Adventure, Sea story
- Subjects: Prisoners, Love or romance, Escapes, Nineteenth century, Polygamy or bigamy, Islands, Sailing or sailors, Rites or ceremonies, Pacific Ocean, Cannibalism, Tattoos
- Locales: Marquesas
Typee: A Peep at Polynesian Life is based on Melville's experiences in the South Seas, specifically his desertion of the whaling ship Acushnet in the Marquesas Islands and his subsequent stay with a tribe of reputedly cannibalistic islanders. He wrote the novel when he was twenty-five, soon after returning from his sea journeys, and he later told his friend Nathaniel Hawthorne that “from my twenty-fifth year I date my life.” The reviews of this first novel were almost unanimously favorable, convincing Melville that he was going to be a literary success.
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