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Herman Melville

1819–1891 · Novelist and poet

God keep me from ever completing anything. This whole book is but a draught — nay, but the draught of a draught. Oh, Time, Strength, Cash, and Patience!
Herman Melville · Moby-Dick (Ishmael, the narrator), 1851

Read it in the source →

Herman Melville gave these words to Ishmael, the narrator of Moby-Dick (1851), at the end of the long chapter that sorts the whales. Small buildings may be finished by their first architects, he says just before; grand ones leave the copestone to posterity.

That summer he told Hawthorne he was working and slaving on his Whale while it was driving through the press.

Moby-Dick, ch. 32 'Cetology' (Ishmael, the narrator), 1851. Moby-Dick; or, The White Whale (New York: United States Book Company, 1892), p. 138.

The originals

Oil portrait of Herman Melville with a full dark beard — **The likeness**PAINTED BY JOSEPH ORIEL EATON · 1870Our portrait is painted after it.Public domain (painted from life; painter died 1875; Commons: PD-Art, PD-old-100-expired).

A manuscript leaf in pencil and ink, with dated notes at the top and words crossed out and rewritten — **Billy Budd · the first leaf**The opening leaf of Billy Budd. The note at the top: begun Friday 16 November 1888, revision begun 2 March 1889. It was still unpublished when he died in 1891.Billy Budd, autograph manuscript, opening leaf, 1888–91. Houghton Library, Harvard University (MS Am 188 (363)), public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.