The various prose sketches here reprinted were first published by Melville, some in Harper's and some in Putnam's magazines, during the years from 1850 to 1856. 'Hawthorne and His Mosses,' the only piece of criticism in this collection, is particularly interesting viewed in the light of Melville's friendship with Hawthorne while they were neighbors at Pittsfield, Massachusetts. The other sketches cover a variety of homely subjects treated by Melville with a fresh humor, richly phrased and curiously personal. Longer and in some ways more ambitious prose pieces written about this same time have been collected under the title of 'Piazza Tales,' but none of the sketches which follow have heretofore been gathered into a book. This has now been done not only to answer a growing demand for accessible reprints of Melville's work but also in response to the literary appeal of the sketches themselves. The author's phraseology and punctuation have, of course, been, followed exactly.
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Herman Melville[a] (1819 - 1891) was an American novelist, short story writer and poet of the American Renaissance period. His best known works include Typee (1846), a romantic account of his experiences in Polynesian life and his whaling novel Moby-Dick (1851). His work was almost forgotten during his last thirty years. His writing draws on his experience at sea as a common sailor, exploration of literature and philosophy, and engagement in the contradictions of American society in a period of rapid change. Melville developed a complex, baroque style: the vocabulary is rich and original, a strong sense of rhythm infuses the elaborate sentences, the imagery is often mystical or ironic and the abundance of allusion extends to Scripture, myth, philosophy, literature and the visual arts.
