Novelist, essayist, poet and mariner Herman Melville is best known as the author of the great American novel, Moby-Dick (1851). Written at his Arrowhead farmhouse in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, it places Melville amongst a prestigious group of literary figures who emerged from the Berkshire area. Mount Greylock is even said to have been the inspiration of the white whale in Moby-Dick.
Melville had visited the Berkshire area frequently as a boy. When Melville’s father died, the twelve-year old was forced to seek odd jobs to support his large family and an uncle hired him to work on his farm in Pittsfield. In 1850, inspired by the beauty and quiet solitude of the area, he settled there with his wife, Elizabeth Shaw, who was daughter of the Chief Justice of Massachusetts.
It wasn’t until the 20th century that Moby-Dick’s brilliance was recognized. The whaling adventure raises questions of faith and human nature and has been read by some in the modern day in light of the environmental ethics which the novel expresses. Today it is set amongst the literary canon, and the farmhouse where it was written has been preserved as a National Historic Landmark.
