Only a handful of Americans in Melville’s time were lucky enough to venture far and wide enough to see places like Polynesia, and Melville took great advantage of his time on the French-controlled islands, eventually turning the experience into his very first book. Throughout the trip, Melville was accompanied by his close friend Richard Tobias Greene, and Melville focused on simply enjoying himself in the exotic lands, living for three weeks among the natives of Typee, who lived primitively in pointed huts made of animal skins. The dwellings closely resembled those of the Native Americans, and for Melville, living among the reportedly cannibalistic people was a romantic adventure. Though it easily could have turned into a dangerous and inhospitable outing, Melville saw the trip as a getaway from the hustle-bustle of life in New York.
Upon his return to America, Melville was now determined to write, and in the summer of 1845 he finished his first novel about his ventures in Polynesia. He appropriately named the book Typee: A Peep at Polynesian Life. Typee was precisely the kind of travel and adventure novel that became very popular during the mid-19th century and helped Mark Twain forge a career out of travelogues. Melville’s story about travel, adventure, and the “noble savage” that was so popular in the Western world of the 19th century struck a chord with its audience, even as the novel criticizes the missionaries located there attempting to “civilize” the natives
Although the travel element and the exotic surroundings fascinated readers, adventure and danger were the dominant themes of the book. The novel centered on a man who was imprisoned on the island of Nukuheva, amid primitive peoples who did not understand the ways of the West. Caught amid cannibals, the prisoner is left to fend for himself, trying to escape from jail. In the process he enters into a forbidden romance with Fayaway, one of the native girls.
The novel immediately became one of America’s greatest and most beloved travel narratives, at the time second only to the works of Lewis and Clark. Melville’s work, however, was not purely autobiographical: the author admitted that it was partly fictional and meant to draw from his experiences, not merely recount them. Given that Typee was semi-autobiographical and augmented by contemporary accounts Melville heard about, it’s unclear to what extent the views of the people were his own.
This edition of Melville's classic includes a Table of Contents.
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