Melville's Reading and Marginalia: Introduction

Melville’s Reading and Marginalia: Introduction STEVEN OLSEN-SMITH Boise State University T his special issue of Leviathan, devoted to Melville’s reading and marginalia, illustrates the increasing use in American literary scholarship of electronic methods of investigation, and this fuller connection to emergent digital resources in turn illustrates new research opportunities and expanding access to underused materials. Publication of this issue corresponds with the launch of the “Online Catalog” at Melville’s Marginalia Online, where much of the content in the following pages first took shape. Carrying on the work of the late Merton M. Sealts, Jr., whose “Melville’s Reading: A CheckList of Books Owned and Borrowed” first appeared six decades ago in the Harvard Library Bulletin, the new “Online Catalog” lists more than 600 books known to be associated with Melville and his household. It supplements bibliographical entries with evidence from his letters and journals and links its entries to a growing online edition of Melville’s marginalia—all in a manner rapidly updatable as marked and annotated books from his library continue to resurface.1 The present issue likewise appears simultaneously with an organizational meeting held on 23 and 24 October 2008 at Hofstra University devoted to the Melville Electronic Library (MEL), a project spearheaded by Melville Society Editor John Bryant with the aim of digitizing Melville’s work, including manuscripts and print editions, as well as offering access to biographical, bibliographical, and secondary materials.2 For reasons illustrated by essays in this issue, the digitization of resources and methods holds special potential for the vast field of Melville’s C
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2008 The Melville Society and Wiley Periodicals, Inc. 1 Merton M. Sealts, Jr. “Melville’s Reading: A Check-List of Books Owned and Borrowed,” Harvard Library Bulletin 2.2–4.1 (1948–50); “The Online Catalog of Books and Documents Owned, Borrowed and Consulted by Herman Melville,” Melville’s Marginalia Online, ed. Steven Olsen-Smith, Peter Norberg, and Dennis C. Marnon. Boise State University . Completion of the “Online Catalog” in October 2008 was made possible by support from the Idaho Humanities Council. 2 “The Melville Electronic Library” . Professor Bryant’s coordination of this effort was made possible by a Digital Start-Up Grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, and by the support and cooperation of Houghton Library, Harvard University. L E V I A T H A N A J O U R N A L O F M E L V I L L E S T U D I E S 3 S T E V E N O L S E N - S M I T H reading. Melville studies has enjoyed its share of explosive holograph discoveries—such as the Billy Budd manuscript early in the twentieth century and, near its end, the “Augusta Papers” that included three chapters of Melville’s Typee draft manuscript. Owing in large part to the long period of popular neglect that characterized Melville’s later life and career as a writer, a few more periodic, large-scale bursts of new evidence may possibly be in store. But even if they are not, we can be sure that gradual holograph discoveries will continue in the form of marked and annotated books resurfacing from Melville’s dispersed library. Of the approximately 1,000 books counted by the appraisers of Melville’s estate, over 400 have been positively identified, and 285 of these are currently known to survive. Many other books that survived him have in all likelihood undergone one or the other forms of bibliographic demise portrayed in his writings, ranging from the abrupt tearing asunder of Pierre’s copies of Hamlet and The Inferno, to the slow dismemberment projected for Redburn’s beloved copy of The Picture of Liverpool. In spite of the likelihood that many copies will remain lost, the continuing survival of books bearing Melville’s autograph is most recently illustrated by his recovered copy of William Tennant’s Anster Fair (Sealts no. 162a, described by Colin Dewey in Leviathan 9.2), and we have every reason to believe that more books will surface. For instance, of the many unlocated books known to have been owned...