2,144 words
In July of 1842, a young American sailor named Herman Melville deserted a whaling vessel anchored off the island of Nukuheva in the Marquesas Archipelago in the South Pacific. He may not have known it then, but the several weeks he would spend among the Typee, the primitive Polynesian inhabitants of the island, would launch one of the most famous American literary careers of the nineteenth century. Four years later, his account of his time on the island was published as Typee: A Peep at Polynesian Life During a Four Months’ Residence in a Valley of the Marquesas. (more…)
