Typee (Oxford World's Classics)

"Typee" is the first "romance" of the South Seas, a semi-autobiographical account of life in the Marquesas Islands in the 1840s. A blend of personal experience and the narratives of explorers and missionaries, it influenced many later writers on the Pacific, including Robert Louis Stevenson and Jack London. Melville himself deserted a whaling ship in the islands and lived for four weeks among the inhabitants, observing and recording their way of life. Typee points up the wonders, the dilemmas, and the "fatal impact" of European encounters with the peoples of the Pacific. This edition offers an introduction that considers the book from a post-colonial perspective, and detailed annotation of Melville's allusions.