Herman Melville

Mardi and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) Herman Melville

Mardi is Melville's first pure fiction work, his previous novels being heavily autobiographical. It details the traveling's of an American sailor who abandons his whaling vessel to explore the South Pacific. Herman Melville was an American writer of novels, short stories and poetry. Melville was a schoolteacher for a short time and a seaman. On his first voyage he jumped ship in the Marquesas Islands. His first book, Typee, was an account of that time and became a bestseller and Melville became known as the "man who lived among the cannibals."