Omoo: A Narrative of Adventures in the South Seas (Penguin Classics) - Softcover

Melville, Herman

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0143104926 ISBN 13: 9780143104926

Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group, 2007

Synopsis

Following the commercial and critical success of Typee, Herman Melville continued his series of South Sea adventure-romances with Omoo. Named after the Polynesian term for a rover, or someone who roams from island to island, Omoo chronicles the tumultuous events aboard a South Sea whaling vessel and is based on Melville's personal experiences as a crew member on a ship sailing the Pacific. From recuiting among the natives for sailors to handling deserters and even mutiny, Melville gives a first-person account of life as a sailor during the nineteenth century filled with colourful characters and vivid descriptions of the far-flung locales of Polynesia.

About this title

About the Author

Herman Melville (1819-91) became in his late twenties a highly successful author of exotic novels based on his experiences as a sailor - writing in quick succession Typee, Omoo, Redburn and White-Jacket. However, his masterpiece Moby-Dick was met with incomprehension and the other later works which are now the basis of his reputation, such as Bartleby, the Scrivener and The Confidence-Man, were failures. Melville stopped writing fiction and the rest of his long life was spent first as a lecturer and then, for nineteen years, as a customs official in New York City. He was also the author of the immensely long poem Clarel, which was similarly dismissed. At the end of his life he wrote Billy Budd, Sailor which was published posthumously in 1924.

Edition details

• Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
• Publication date: 2007
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0143104926
• ISBN 13: 9780143104926
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 416