Herman Melville's Marginalia Online

FAIN: FX-50053-08

Peter Christopher Norberg
Saint Joseph's University (Philadelphia, PA 19131-1308)

The acclaimed writer of Moby-Dick, Billy Budd, Sailor and other revered works of American literature was also a great reader of books. Yet even among American literary scholars, few are familiar with the scope and variety of Herman Melville's personal library. Although the working manuscripts for most of Melville's major works are either unlocated or destroyed, one can find valuable clues to his composition process in the margins and endpapers of the books he had before him while he wrote. Launched in January 2006, Melville's Marginalia Online makes available to users accurate, fully annotated transcriptions of Melville's markings and commentary in the extant books he collected throughout his career. This project makes it possible for scholars to engage in a comparative analysis of Melville's markings in a variety of texts relevant to the manuscript archive and to the novels and poetry for which there are no manuscript records.