This topic explores the special character of Nantucket Island as reflected in literature, from ship’s logs and journals, diaries, and music as well as it’s representation in both non-fiction and fiction.
- The Nantucket Girl’s Song
I have made up my mind now to be a Sailor’s wife, To have a purse full of money and...More Read more from The Nantucket Girl’s Song - Reuben Chase and “Long Tom Coffin”
Long Tom Coffin is a character in James Fenimore Cooper’s 1824 novel The Pilot. The novel was published ten years...More Read more from Reuben Chase and “Long Tom Coffin” - “Very Like a Whale”: Editions of Moby-Dick
Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick originally appeared in 1851 to little fanfare and even less renown. With a drab, darkish, dreary cover,...More Read more from “Very Like a Whale”: Editions of Moby-Dick - “My Yale College and My Harvard”: The Writing of Herman Melville’s Sea Works
A WHALE-SHIP WAS MY YALE COLLEGE and my Harvard,” Herman Melville writes in Moby-Dick (ch. 24). Of course, it wasn’t...More Read more from “My Yale College and My Harvard”: The Writing of Herman Melville’s Sea Works - Moby-Dick, The Monster Myth
Before Melville, stories of demonic whales circled the globe. The whales that emerge from myths and fables often were not...More Read more from Moby-Dick, The Monster Myth - Herman Melville’s Visit to Nantucket
Herman Melville wrote his classic novel Moby-Dick (1851) without having visited the island of Nantucket. The island and its whaling...More Read more from Herman Melville’s Visit to Nantucket - The Pequod’s, and Nantucket’s, Multiethnic Whalers
Just as aboard the fictional Pequod, the crews of Nantucket whaleships were multiethnic. On the outside wall of the Nantucket...More Read more from The Pequod’s, and Nantucket’s, Multiethnic Whalers - Pop Culture and Moby-Dick
Moby-Dick is emblazoned in the canon of literature, art, opera, theater, film, and daily life. When did you first spot...More Read more from Pop Culture and Moby-Dick - The More Things Change: Diary of Charles Dyer
Occasionally a visitor will ask to see something in the NHA Research Library that rarely sees the light of day....More Read more from The More Things Change: Diary of Charles Dyer - The Unemployable Herman Melville
After all this time, we are still learning a little more about Herman Melville’s decision to sign on a whaleship...More Read more from The Unemployable Herman Melville - Eye Dialect
In newspapers and books, particularly in the 1800s, “eye dialect” was a way of approximating in print nonstandard pronunciation of...More Read more from Eye Dialect