Redburn

First edition title page

Redburn: His First Voyage^[1] is a novel by Herman Melville published on September 29, 1849, by Richard Bentley in London and on November 14, 1849, by Harper & Brothers in New York City.

Overview

The author returned to the tone of his first novels, Typee (1846) and Omoo (1847). Redburn is a semi-autobiographical novel concerning the sufferings of a refined youth among coarse and brutal sailors and the seedier areas of Liverpool. This theme of a youth confronted by realities and evils for which he is unprepared—or incorrectly prepared by both family and American institutions—is a prominent one in Melville's works.^{[citation needed]}

The novel is not generally considered as profound as Melville's later works, the most notable being Moby-Dick.

With Redburn, Melville returned to a more commercial format after the failure of his allegorical novel Mardi, which was published earlier in the year. Redburn employed a straightforward, travelogue-like narrative in the traditions of his earliest work. Redburn does make some social criticisms, including attacks on the evils of drinking alcohol.

Redburn contains one of the more notable examples of spontaneous combustion in literature, along with Charles Dickens' Bleak House.

Character List

• Wellingborough Redburn (a.k.a., Buttons)
• Redburn's elder brother (unnamed in the book)
• Mr. Jones
• Captain Riga
• The Highlander Crew
  • The suicidal sailor
  • Jackson
  • Max the Dutchman
  • The Greenlander
  • Mr Thompson, the cook, aka, the Doctor
  • Lavender
  • Jack Blunt
  • Larry
  • Gun-Deck
• The Liverpool Docks
  • Danby
  • Mary, Danby's wife
  • Bob Still, Danby's old crony
  • Townspeople, other foreign sailors, policemen, the poor, the beggars, the depraved
• Harry Bolton
• Miguel Saveda
• Carlo
• The O'Briens and the O'Regans
• Goodwell

Development & publication history

The first known allusion to Redburn appeared in a letter to Melville's English publisher, in the late spring of 1849, in which he stated the novel would be practical rather than follow the "unwise" course of his heavily-criticised previous novel, Mardi.

. This more commercial approach to writing came as Melville's working conditions worsened and his family obligations increased. Now living with him in the small house in New York city were his wife, child, mother, sisters, and his brother Allen with his wife and child. Melville later portrayed himself at this time as being forced to write "with duns all around him, & looking over the back of his chair—& perching on his pen & diving in his inkstand—like the devils about St. Anthony."^[2]

Redburn was published in the United States in November 1849. Melville referred to it and his next book White-Jacket as "two jobs which I have done for money—being forced to it as other men are to sawing wood".^[3] After it was praised, Melville felt guilt and wrote in his journal, "I, the author, know [it] to be trash, & wrote it to buy some tobacco with".^[3]

References

External links

Wikisource has original text related to this article: Redburn

Entry for Redburn @ Melville.org