Typee, Herman Melville
Typee, Herman Melville
1 Rating(s)
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Typee
A Peep at Polynesian Life

Author: Herman Melville

Narrator: George Guidall

Unabridged: 11 hr 32 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Recorded Books

Published: 04/29/2011

Categories: Fiction, Classic, Anthologies

Synopsis

Herman Melville is one of the greatest figures in literary history. His classic Moby Dick is generally considered the finest novel ever written by an American. Yet in Melville's day, Typee was a far more popular book. Largely autobiographical, this classic adventure story is set in the South Seas, where a runaway sailor is captured by the Typees. Described as "a fierce and unrelenting tribe of savages," the islanders have no intention of letting their captive go.

About Herman Melville

Herman Melville (1819–1891) was an American novelist, short-story writer, essayist, and poet who is often classified as part of dark romanticism. He is best known for his novel Moby Dick and novella Billy Budd, the latter which was published posthumously. His first three books gained much attention, the first becoming a bestseller, but after a fast-blooming literary success in the late 1840s, his popularity declined precipitously in the mid-1850s and never recovered during his lifetime. When he died, he was almost completely forgotten. It was not until the "Melville Revival" in the early twentieth century that his work won recognition, most notably Moby Dick, which was hailed as one of the chief literary masterpieces of both American and world literature.

Reviews

Goodreads review by bup on December 31, 2009

This is the story Herman Melville was meant to tell. I hated Billy Budd; I liked Moby Dick a lot; I loved Typee. Not coincidentally, Melville wrote this before he had met Nathaniel Hawthorne; and everything else he ever wrote after. I think Hawthorne ruined Melville as a writer. This book feels real.......more

Goodreads review by Susanna on January 18, 2009

Don't read this book if you want to lie around and dream of coconuts and natives and bare-breasted maidens. Unlike those after him (like London, Twain, and Stevenson), Melville plays with the instability of western illusions about foreign places and people. You'll have to read this between the lines......more

Goodreads review by Ian on February 15, 2016

Revision 16/2/16: I found a subversive quote and made stylistic edits. Typee is a fascinating and surprising account of South Sea islander life in the mid-nineteenth century. The story starts as an adventure tale with young sailors Tommo and Toby jumping ship as the whaler Dolly replenishes her suppli......more

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