Redburn: His First Voyage is a novel by
Herman MelvilleHerman Melville was an American novelist, short story writer, essayist and poet who is often classified as part of dark romanticism...
published on September 29, 1849, by
Richard BentleyRichard Bentley was an English theologian, classical scholar and critic.- Early life :Bentley was born at Oulton near Rothwell, Leeds, West Yorkshire. His grandfather had suffered for the Royalist cause following the English Civil War, leaving the family in reduced circumstances...
in
London[]London is the capital of England and the United Kingdom. It has been a major settlement for two millennia, and the history of London goes back to its founding by the Romans, when it was named Londinium. London's core, the ancient City of London, the 'square mile', retains its medieval boundaries...
and on November 14, 1849, by
Harper & BrothersHarper & Brothers was a prominent New York City book and magazine publishing firm which founded Harper's Magazine.James Harper and his brother John, printers by training, started their book publishing business J. & J. Harper in 1817. Their two brothers, Joseph Wesley Harper and Fletcher Harper,...
in
New York CityNew York is the most populous city in the United States, and the center of the New York metropolitan area, which is among the most populous urban areas in the world. A leading global city, New York exerts a powerful influence over worldwide commerce, finance, culture, fashion and entertainment...
.
The author returned to the tone of his first novels,
TypeeTypee is American writer Herman Melville's first book, partly based on his actual experiences as a captive on Nuku Hiva in the South Pacific Marquesas Islands and the title comes from a valley there called Tai Pi Vai...
(1846) and
OmooOmoo: A Narrative of the South Seas is Herman Melville's sequel to Typee, and, as such, was also autobiographical. After leaving Nuku Hiva, the main character ships aboard a whaling vessel which makes its way to Tahiti, after which there is a mutiny and the majority of the crew are imprisoned on...
(1847).
Redburn is a semi-autobiographical novel concerning the sufferings of a refined youth among coarse and brutal sailors and the seedier areas of
LiverpoolLiverpool is a city and metropolitan borough of Merseyside, England, along the eastern side of the Mersey Estuary. It was founded as a borough in 1207 and was granted city status in 1880...
.
Redburn: His First Voyage is a novel by
Herman MelvilleHerman Melville was an American novelist, short story writer, essayist and poet who is often classified as part of dark romanticism...
published on September 29, 1849, by
Richard BentleyRichard Bentley was an English theologian, classical scholar and critic.- Early life :Bentley was born at Oulton near Rothwell, Leeds, West Yorkshire. His grandfather had suffered for the Royalist cause following the English Civil War, leaving the family in reduced circumstances...
in
London[]London is the capital of England and the United Kingdom. It has been a major settlement for two millennia, and the history of London goes back to its founding by the Romans, when it was named Londinium. London's core, the ancient City of London, the 'square mile', retains its medieval boundaries...
and on November 14, 1849, by
Harper & BrothersHarper & Brothers was a prominent New York City book and magazine publishing firm which founded Harper's Magazine.James Harper and his brother John, printers by training, started their book publishing business J. & J. Harper in 1817. Their two brothers, Joseph Wesley Harper and Fletcher Harper,...
in
New York CityNew York is the most populous city in the United States, and the center of the New York metropolitan area, which is among the most populous urban areas in the world. A leading global city, New York exerts a powerful influence over worldwide commerce, finance, culture, fashion and entertainment...
.
Overview
The author returned to the tone of his first novels,
TypeeTypee is American writer Herman Melville's first book, partly based on his actual experiences as a captive on Nuku Hiva in the South Pacific Marquesas Islands and the title comes from a valley there called Tai Pi Vai...
(1846) and
OmooOmoo: A Narrative of the South Seas is Herman Melville's sequel to Typee, and, as such, was also autobiographical. After leaving Nuku Hiva, the main character ships aboard a whaling vessel which makes its way to Tahiti, after which there is a mutiny and the majority of the crew are imprisoned on...
(1847).
Redburn is a semi-autobiographical novel concerning the sufferings of a refined youth among coarse and brutal sailors and the seedier areas of
LiverpoolLiverpool is a city and metropolitan borough of Merseyside, England, along the eastern side of the Mersey Estuary. It was founded as a borough in 1207 and was granted city status in 1880...
. This theme of a youth confronted by realities and evils for which he is unprepared—or incorrectly prepared by both family and American institutions—is a prominent one in Melville's works.
While not generally considered as profound as Melville's later works, the most notable being
Moby-DickMoby-Dick is a classic novel published in 1851 by American author Herman Melville. Originally misunderstood by contemporary audiences and critics, Moby-Dick is now often referred to as "The Great American Novel" and is considered one of the treasures of world literature...
, the novel can be viewed as a precursor to later, more complex works of fiction. For example, many of
Redburn's themes are echoed in
Moby-Dick, and some of
Redburn's characters are forerunners of those in Melville's most epic novel (e.g., Jackson is a precursor of Captain Ahab).
With
Redburn, Melville was hastily trying to return to a more commercial format after having taken a critical and commercial drubbing with his allegorical novel
MardiMardi, and a Voyage Thither is the third book by American author Herman Melville, first published in 1849.-Overview:Mardi is Melville's first pure fiction work...
, which had been published earlier in the year. Melville leaves behind the complex structures in
Mardi, a book that never quite gelled, for a more straightforward and travelogue-like narrative in the traditions of his earliest work. The novel does, however, display some of the more experimental tendencies that made
Moby-Dick so popular after Melville's death, and begins to incorporate much of the symbolism that separates his earlier work from later, denser novels such as
PierrePierre: or, The Ambiguities is a novel written by Herman Melville, and published in 1852 by Harper & Brothers. It is the only novel by Melville that takes place on land in the United States....
. Melville also takes the opportunity in
Redburn to make a number of social criticisms, perhaps most prominent among them both explicit and implicit attacks on the evils of drink.
Oddly enough,
Redburn also contains one of the notable examples of
spontaneous combustionSpontaneous human combustion is a name used to describe cases of the burning of a living human body without an external source of ignition. There is speculation and controversy regarding SHC - some regard it as a unique and currently unexplained phenomenon, while others feel that cases described...
in literature, along with
Charles DickensCharles John Huffam Dickens FRSA , pen-name "Boz", was the most popular English novelist of the Victorian era and one of the most popular of all time. He created some of literature's most memorable characters. His novels and short stories have never gone out of print...
'
Bleak HouseBleak House is the ninth novel by Charles Dickens, published in twenty monthly instalments between March 1852 and September 1853. It is held to be one of Dickens's finest novels, containing one of the most vast, complex and engaging arrays of minor characters and sub-plots in his entire canon...
.
Character List
- Wellingborough Redburn (a.k.a., Buttons)
- Mr. Jones
- Captain Briga
- The Highlander Crew
- Jackson
- Max the Dutchman
- Mr Thompson
- Lavender
- Jack Blunt
- Larry
- Gun-Deck
- The Liverpool Docks
- Danby
- Mary, Danby's wife
- Bob Still, Danby's old crony
- Townspeople, other foreign sailors, policemen, the poor, the beggars, the depraved
- Harry Bolton
- Miguel Saveda
- Carlo
- The O'Briens and the O'Regans
- Goodwell
Publication history
Redburn was published in the United States in November 1849. Melville referred to it and his next book
White-JacketWhite-Jacket, or The World in a Man-of-War, usually referred to as White-Jacket, is an 1850 novel by Herman Melville first published in England on January 23 by Richard Bentley and in the U.S...
as "two
jobs which I have done for money—being forced to it as other men are to sawing wood". After it was praised, Melville felt guilt and wrote in his journal, "I, the author, know [it] to be trash, & wrote it to buy some tobacco with".