Herman Melville

Typee. Novel by Herman Melville

Typee: A Peep at Polynesian Life is the first book by American writer Herman Melville, published first in London, then New York, in 1846. Considered a classic in travel and adventure literature, the narrative is partly based on the author's actual experiences on the island Nuku Hiva in the South Pacific Marquesas Islands in 1842, liberally supplemented with imaginative reconstruction and adaptation of material from other books. The title is from the province Tai Pi Vai. Typee was Melville's most popular work during his lifetime; it made him notorious as the "man who lived among the cannibals Typee is "in fact, neither literal autobiography nor pure fiction." Melville "drew his material from his experiences, from his imagination, and from a variety of travel books when the memory of his experiences were inadequate." He departed from what actually happened in several ways, sometimes by extending factual incidents, sometimes by fabricating them, and sometimes by what one scholar calls "outright lies."