Editor's Note

Omoo is so close a sequel to “Typee,” that it almost forms a part of that work. Herman Melville’s second book appeared in 1847, published (as its forerunner had been the year before) simultaneously in London and New York. In “Omoo,” as Mr. Arthur Stedman says— “We leave for the most part the dreamy pictures of island life, and find ourselves sharing the extremely realistic discomforts of a Sydney whaler in the early forties.” Both books are without a doubt largely autobiographical, and based on the writer’s early sea-adventures, of which his voyage in the “Acushnet” in 1841– 2 was the most memorable.

Herman Melville was born in New York, on August 1, 1819, and came of mixed Dutch and English stock. His father was a merchant, and died before the boy left school, whose charge then devolved on an uncle, a well-to-do farmer. But Herman, wishing to be free, soon declared a love for the sea, and made his first voyage as a cabin-boy. After leaving the sea finally in 1842, Melville lived first in New York, and then for many years near Pittsville, where he had for a time Nathaniel Hawthorne as his neighbour. For fuller particulars of his career, see the introduction to the companion volume of “Typee.” He died in New York, on September 28, 1891. The following is the list of his published volumes.

December, 1907.