Melville, Herman | “We know not what we do when we hate.”

Melville, Herman

Mardi: and a Voyage Thither. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1849

2 volumes, 8vo. 8pp. publisher's advertisement at rear of Vol. II. Publisher's brown cloth, covers blocked in blind, spines gilt-lettered, yellow endpapers. Housed in a brown cloth box.

First American edition of Melville's third novel

Unlike his first two novels, here Melville's sea-going narrative adopts metaphorical allegories and parallel commentary, themes he would explore further in Moby Dick, published two years later.

In a letter to John Murray dated 25 March 1848, which he wrote while arranging for the publication of the English edition, Melville described Mardi: "The work I shall next publish will in downright earnest [be] a 'Romance of Polynesian Adventure'—…the reiterated imputation of being a romance in disguise has at last pricked me into a resolution to show those who may take any interest in the matter, that a real romance of mine is no Typee or Omoo, & is made of different stuff altogether. [It] is no dish water nor its model borrowed from the Circulating Library" (Davis & Gilman).

REFERENCE

BAL 13658; Davis & Gilman 70; Sadleir, Excursions 225