This previously unpublished letter, one of 36 to be retrieved since the publication of The Letters of Herman Melville (1960), has earned a place in the New York Public Library's Gansevoort-Lansing Collection.


The Malcolm Letter was written by Melville in 1849, on the birth of his son. In a bit of dramatic irony, Melville reflects on the responsibility looming ahead of him as the reader notes the tragedy that Melville cannot possibly foresee- his son Malcolm's suicide eighteen years later. Cohen and Yannella's careful study relives for the reader this and other events which shaped the clannish Melville family history and how the author's struggle with these pressures is manifested in his writing.