Note on Books

The complete and definitive edition of Melville’s works is that published by Constable and Company, London, 1923–1924. With the exception of Israel Potter, The Confidence Man, Pierre, and the various volumes of verse, all of Melville’s work can now be obtained in contemporary popular editions. Mr. Raymond Weaver’s edition of The Shorter Novels of Herman Melville (Horace Liveright, 1928) and Mr. Henry Chapin’s edition of the Appletree Table and Other Sketches and of John Marr and Other Poems (Princeton University Press, 1922) make almost all of Melville’s significant minor work available. Mr. Meade Minnegrode’s Some Personal Letters of Herman Melville and a Bibliography contains extracts from some of Melville’s Letters to Evert Duyckinck. The bibliography covers in detail all of Melville’s writings, giving both American and English first editions. The first biography of Herman Melville was that of Mr. Raymond Weaver: Herman Melville, Mariner and Mystic (Doran, 1921). Mr. John Freeman’s brief critical biography belongs to the new English Men of Letters Series (Macmillan, 1926); Mr. Freeman has the distinction of being the first to deal patiently and critically with Melville’s poetry. Various other volumes on Herman Melville are now in course of preparation. Among the critics whose studies of Melville have contributed to his revival and to a proper evaluation of his work I would mention especially Mr. Frank Jewett Mather, Jr., Miss Viola Meynell, Mr. Percy Boynton, Mr. J. W. N. Sullivan, Mr. E. L. Grant Watson, and, not least, Mr. Van Wyck Brooks.