This book sheds new light on Melville’s classic novel
Typee
through a close and revealing look at his revision process.
Typee: A Peep at Polynesian Life
was published in 1846 and was Melville’s most popular work, offering Victorian readers startling and romantic glimpses of island people and practices.
The Typee
manuscript was discovered only in 1983, and is considered one of the most important literary manuscripts in nineteenth-century American studies.
Melville Unfolding
offers a new approach to literary analysis, focusing on how the
invisible text of revision
is made visible in the critical construction of the novel. This volume is linked to an electronic edition of
Typee , providing a model for how critical analysis and textual editing work synergistically and how print and online technologies can complement one another.
Melville Unfolding
walks readers through the intriguing twists and turns of Melville’s writing process, detailing the delights and frustrations of reading a writer in manuscript. In jargon-free prose, John Bryant introduces the scholarship of manuscript study, the use of the revision narrative, and the benefits of the fluid-text analysis - asking readers to consider what a text is, how it comes into being, how it evolves, and how the study of a fluid text enhances our understanding of writers, writing, and culture.