Narrative of a Four Month's Residence Among the Natives of a Valley of the Marquesas Islands; or, A Peep at Polynesian Life

1846 Melville, Herman (1819-91). Narrative of a Four Month’s Residence Among the Natives of a Valley of the Marquesas Islands; or, A Peep at Polynesian Life. London: John Murray. Rpt. as Typee: A Peep at Polynesian Life. During a Four Months’ Residence in a Valley of the Marquesas With Notices of the French Occupation of Tahiti and the Provisional Cession of the Sandwich Islands to Lord Paulet. 2 vols. New York: Wiley and Putnam/London: John Murray, 1846; Typee: A Peep at Polynesian Life. During a Four Months’ Residence in a Valley of the Marquesas; The Revised Edition, With a Sequel. 2 vols. in 1. New York: Wiley and Putnam/London: John Murray, 1846; Typee; or, A Narrative of a Four Month’s Residence Among the Natives of a Valley of the Marquesas Islands; or, A Peep at Polynesian Life. London: John Murray, 1847; Typee: A Romance of the South Seas. With an Introduction by Raymond Weaver and Illustrations by Miguel Covarrubias. New York: Limited Editions Club, 1935; Typee: A Peep at Polynesan Life During a Four Months’ Residence in a Valley of the Marquesas. [Luke, MD]: West Virginia Pulp and Paper Co., 1962; Typee, a Peep at Polynesian Life. Ed. Harrison Hayford, Hershel Parker and G. Thomas Tanselle. Vol. 1 of The Writings of Herman Melville. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1968; and Typee: Complete Text with Introduction Historical Contexts Critical Essays. Ed. Geoffrey Sanborn. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 2004. The manuscript is reproduced in John Bryant, Melville Unfolding: Sexuality, Politics and the Versions of Typee: A Fluid-Text Analysis, with an Edition of the Typee Manuscript. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2008. There is an adaptation and satire: Dorothy C. Calhoun, “Typee.” One Hundred Non-Royalty One-Act Plays. Comp. William Kozlenko (New York: Greenburg, 1940), 794-802. DLC, L, PSt

Eutopia set on an island in the South Pacific where Melville was held captive. It depicts the happy, seemingly innocent natives, who are also cannibals, and thus resonates with both Michel Montaigne’s (1533-92) “De Cannibales” (1580) and Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s (1712-78) argument against civilized behavior. Melville’s Omoo: A Narrative of Adventures in the South Seas (1847) was presented as a sequel, but it has little that can be called utopian. See also 1849 Melville.