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In 1842 a young American sailor deserts his whaling ship in the Marquesas Islands with a friend and, after a hard trek over the mountains, ends up in the…
In 1842 a young American sailor deserts his whaling ship in the Marquesas Islands with a friend and, after a hard trek over the mountains, ends up in the valley of the Typee people, who are feared as cannibals. He is treated as an honoured guest, nursed through an injured leg and shown a life of ease and beauty, yet he is never allowed to leave.
Context and significance
Typee was Herman Melville's first book, based on his own weeks in the Marquesas, and it made him famous in 1846 as the man who had lived among the cannibals. Its criticism of missionaries and colonial powers was bold for its time, and its love of the sea leads directly to Moby-Dick.
About the author
Herman Melville (1819–1891) was born in New York to a family ruined when he was a boy. At twenty he went to sea, sailed on a whaler to the Pacific, deserted in the Marquesas Islands and turned the adventure into Typee, a bestseller that made him famous at twenty-seven.
His ambitions grew with each book, and Moby-Dick, published in 1851, was misunderstood and sold poorly. He spent nineteen years as a customs inspector on the New York docks, writing poems and the stories Bartleby, the Scrivener and Billy Budd, and died almost forgotten; he was rediscovered as a great writer in the 1920s.