Redburn His First Voyage

Written by Herman Melville

Narrated by Geoffrey Giuliano and The Ark

Herman Melville was an American novelist, short story writer, and poet of the American Renaissance period. Among his bestknown works are MobyDick (1851); Typee (1846), a romanticized account of his experiences in Polynesia; and Billy Budd, Sailor, a posthumously published novella. Although his reputation was not high at the time of his death, the 1919 centennial of his birth was the starting point of a Melville revival, and MobyDick grew to be considered one of the great American novels.

Melville's growing literary ambition showed in MobyDick (1851), which took nearly a year and a half to write, but it did not find an audience, and critics scorned his psychological novel Pierre: or, The Ambiguities (1852). From 1853 to 1856, Melville published short fiction in magazines, including "Benito Cereno" and "Bartleby, the Scrivener". In 1857, he traveled to England, toured the Near East, and published his last work of prose, The ConfidenceMan (1857). He moved to New York in 1863, eventually taking a position as United States customs inspector.

From that point, Melville focused his creative powers on poetry. BattlePieces and Aspects of the War (1866) was his poetic reflection on the moral questions of the American Civil War. In 1867, his eldest child Malcolm died at home from a selfinflicted gunshot. Melville's metaphysical epic Clarel: A Poem and Pilgrimage in the Holy Land was published in 1876. In 1886, his other son Stanwix died of apparent tuberculosis, and Melville retired. During his last years, he privately published two volumes of poetry, and left one volume unpublished. The novella Billy Budd was left unfinished at his death, but was published posthumously in 1924. Melville died from cardiovascular disease in 1891.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Icon Audio Arts
• Release date: Aug 4, 2022
• ISBN: 9798887670683

Herman Melville

Herman Melville (1819-1891) was an American novelist, poet, and short story writer. Following a period of financial trouble, the Melville family moved from New York City to Albany, where Allan, Herman’s father, entered the fur business. When Allan died in 1832, the family struggled to make ends meet, and Herman and his brothers were forced to leave school in order to work. A small inheritance enabled Herman to enroll in school from 1835 to 1837, during which time he studied Latin and Shakespeare. The Panic of 1837 initiated another period of financial struggle for the Melvilles, who were forced to leave Albany. After publishing several essays in 1838, Melville went to sea on a merchant ship in 1839 before enlisting on a whaling voyage in 1840. In July 1842, Melville and a friend jumped ship at the Marquesas Islands, an experience the author would fictionalize in his first novel, Typee (1845). He returned home in 1844 to embark on a career as a writer, finding success as a novelist with the semi-autobiographical novels Typee and Omoo (1847), befriending and earning the admiration of Nathaniel Hawthorne and Oliver Wendell Holmes, and publishing his masterpiece Moby-Dick in 1851. Despite his early success as a novelist and writer of such short stories as “Bartleby, the Scrivener” and “Benito Cereno,” Melville struggled from the 1850s onward, turning to public lecturing and eventually settling into a career as a customs inspector in New York City. Towards the end of his life, Melville’s reputation as a writer had faded immensely, and most of his work remained out of print until critical reappraisal in the early twentieth century recognized him as one of America’s finest writers.

Reviews for Redburn His First Voyage

[markbstephenson · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Wellingborough Redburn comes from a large and illustrious New York mercantile family which has recently become impoverished because of the bankruptcy and death of his father. Needing to support himself, he decides to find employment where employment is available - the sea. This novel, like Melville's earlier Typee and Omoo, is a sort of fictionalized memoir based upon his own experiences at sea - this time his first voyage in 1839. This was not aboard a whaling ship but on a merchant vessel carrying goods and passengers from New York to Liverpool and back. Redburn is far more advanced in literary matters than his co-workers but this counts for nothing until he has learned (literally) the ropes and how to manage sails with them. His self-deprecating humor as this process begins and continues is a good deal of what makes this novel so entertaining. He suffers much but learns through what he suffers and because of his outstanding literary gifts and capacities for close and discerning observation gives us a very vivid view of his fellow crew members, their ship and their very arduous lives. Once in Liverpool we are treated to some very touching scenes of the poverty and vice there at that day and Henry Bolton, a young Englishman in comparable circumstances to Redburn's own is introduced. Henry joins the return trip to New York seeking to emigrate to America, but sadly comes to a tragic end despite Redburn's efforts on his behalf. This and Redburn's many speculative (i.e. Melvillean) flights of fancy ultimately turn this into quite a deep and serious work.

[dmarsh451 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Melville is one of the writers I 'saved for later'. I wanted to be able to crack open the occasional unread heavy hitter. It was a risky move. Anything goes wrong now, I will never read 'Moby Dick', and if that car in St-Lazare had driven rather than skidded into my bike back in '04, I would never have read 'Moby Dick' or 'Redburn'. That would be a pity. I would have missed watching Wellingborough, cringe green at the start, learn his ropes. It is complicated, physically taxing work that Melville describes through the young man's apprentice eyes. These are some beautiful pictures, as elegant as snowflakes and as phantom.
"There is no counting the names, that surgeons and anatomists give to the various parts of the human body; which, indeed, is something like a ship; its bones being the stiff standing-rigging, and the sinews the small running ropes, that manage all the motions."
Here is a passage about navigation that in the era of GPS gives me shivers, "The ship lay gently rolling in the soft, subdued ocean swell; while all around were faint white spots; and nearer to, broad, milky patches, betokening the vicinity of scores of ships, all bound to one common port, and tranced in one common calm. Here the long, devious wakes from Europe, Africa, India, and Peru converged to a line, which braided them all in one."

[corinneblackmer · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Redburn Wellingborough, a young man who idealizes his Revolutionary War era father, decides to go to sea, leaving his bereaved mother and sister and taking with him a journal written by his father that he regards as sacrosanct. The moment he leaves home, however, he is ridiculed for his antique clothing, and we become aware that we are in the Jackson Era, during which most Revolutionary Era pieties, institutions, and assumptions, including the assumption of having a prosperous family farm, have been exploded. Redburn is an outcast, a fact which is underscored when he encounters mean bullies in New York City and, even worse, the malignant Captain Riga, a Russian who defrauds him mercilessly. He acquires a friend on the voyage to Liverpool and, when there, he discovers that his father made his money from the slave trade. He attempts to get food for a starving mother and her children and, eventually, makes his way back to the boat for the voyage back to New York City. He has a friend who is ruthlessly and unspeakably bullied--made to engage in the most debasing sexual and social rites--and keeps a measured distance from the victim of the relentless Jackson. When he arrives back in New York, he deserts his friend, who he later learns has died.

[ganeshaka · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Moby Dick! Moby Dick! Moby Dick....forget about Moby Dick! It's a magnum opus. Thank you John Huston/Gregory Peck for the iconic movie. Thank you John Bonham for the drum solo. But if you really want to peer inside the mind of Herman Melville, read Redburn instead.Why? For starters, you will see that magnum opus in its beta format. Redburn is a first person fictional account of Melville's first sea voyage...a round trip from New York to Liverpool. The narrator, Redburn Wellingborough, even refers to himself as Ishmael. There are two prototypes of Ahab. Captain Riga, a man with a split personality - deceptively charming to recruits, at port, and aloof as a Chinese emperor, at sea. And there's a crew member, Jackson, who bullies and dominates his crew mates by the sheer force of his irascible personality. Despite his terminal illness and average size, he is intimidation personified.But Redburn is more than just a Two Years Before the Mast (Richard Dana's classic), replete though it is with sea lore. It is a glimpse inside young Melville's mind, revealing his analytic intelligence, his attention to detail, his compassion for the unfortunate, his sensitivity to social undercurrents, his wide ranging curiosity, and his wry humor.A good percentage of the novel concerns Redburn's explorations, while on leave, of Liverpool. Melville writes with the clarity of journalist, and probes like an investigative reporter. In one section, he is heartrending in his description of Redburn's unsuccessful attempts to get aid for a starving, dying woman and her three children. In another section, he is compelling in his argument for changing shipping safety laws to protect immigrant steerage passengers on trans-Atlantic voyages. And in a chapter revealing his naivete - in relying on a fifty year old guidebook - he is charming with self deprecating humor.I picked this book off a store shelf on a whim, partly intrigued by the Edward Gorey cover illustration, and partly because I recalled a quote from the movie Adventureland, to the effect that Melville died in obscurity and the New York Times misreported his first name. Having finished Redburn, I am inspired to read the rest of Melville's oeuvre. His personality, his halo, his soul flashes in Redburn, like - well OK then - St Elmo's fire in Moby Dick!