In the Galapagos Islands with Herman Melville
March 14, 2011 § 1 Comment
A New Galapagos Book just released…
Herman Melville Tours the Galapagos Islands
Who knew that Herman Melville, world-famous author of Moby-Dick, spent time in the Galapagos Islands?
And what’s more, that he later wrote a fascinating series of magazine articles about these Enchanted Isles, as they were called by early explorers and Buccaneers (a fancy name for pirates)!
Melville first glimpsed the Galapagos Islands in 1841 as a young seaman on the whaler Acushnet out of New Bedford, Massachusetts. Years later, after the initial failure of his novel Moby-Dick, he tried to regain his lost popularity with the reading public by writing a series ten of magazine sketches he called “The Encantadas or Enchanted Isles,” recalling the strange worlds he found in the Galapagos archipelago.
Now, award-winning author Lynn Michelsohn has put this series of ten sketches together with striking photographs of Galapagos wildlife and landscapes, and modern introductions to the sketches, in a new book called In the Galapagos Islands with Herman Melville
In the Galapagos Islands with Herman Melville includes . . .
~ Herman Melville’s ten sketches that he called “The Encantadas or Enchanted Isles.”
~ Forty of Moses Michelsohn’s striking photographs (in color in the ebook) from the Galapagos Islands: birds, iguanas, giant tortoises, sea lions, exotic plants, and volcanic landscapes.
~ Lynn Michelsohn’s introduction to the work, and to each individual sketch.
Are you planning a trip to the Galapagos Islands? Bring In the Galapagos Islands with Herman Melville with you, or read it before you leave home. Enrich your experience with glimpses of the archipelago’s captivating natural and human history written over 150 years ago by that famous fellow traveler.
Yes, his early works had a lot to do with sailing already.