Beginnings

Herman Melville was born in 1819.  He was a shy child who had trouble learning to read and write, and he spent his childhood in the shadow of his older brother Gansevoort, his parent's firstborn child.

His grandfathers were heroes of the American Revolution; Melville grew up questioning their stories of triumph over "barbaric" natives who stood in the way of progress.

His maternal grandmother suffered from depression, as did his mother Maria.

Both his parents had social aspirations.  As a young girl, Maria was warned against reading too much fiction, which was viewed as having a dangerous influence on developing minds.  She never felt entirely comfortable having a writer as a son.   Melville's father, Allan, made a living importing luxury items that were sold to middle-class people who longed to improve their status.  Allan embarked on his career in the era of individualism that had taken hold after the War of 1812, an era in which commitment to the "common good" was seen as naive.

The country's prosperity did not last.  By 1819, economic expansion was stymied by a recession that led to numerous bank failures and business foreclosures.  Those with access to wealth profited from buying up distressed properties, and the gap between rich and poor grew significantly.  Pauperism had become visible in urban areas by the year of Herman's birth.

Allan eventually became caught between an old economic system, which relied on personal integrity and quality, and a new system in which quick profits on bulk sales reigned supreme.  Despite his tendency to capitalize the entire name of GOD in his letters and his claims of integrity, he too became morally compromised by the demands of the market.

In January 1830, Maria gave birth to the couple's eighth and last child.  A few months prior Melville had entered the prestigious Columbia Grammar School in New York City.  By the end of that summer, Allan was in such financial distress that he was forced to liquidate his business and flee the City.  He failed at his next business venture, a fur-and-cap store in Albany, and was dead from overexertion by 1832. Maria fell into a deep depression and Melville, forced to leave school before the age of thirteen, was put to work clerking in the New York State Bank.  The loss of the opportunity to be a scholar turned the formerly slow learner into a voracious reader and autodidact.