Tag: Herman Melville

Nantucket History & People

Chronicling Life on Nantucket

~ by Amy Jenness ~ More than 100 years after the first white people settled on Nantucket, the French-American writer Hector St. John de Crevecoer visited and recorded his perceptions of island life in his influential book Letters From An American Farmer. Published in 1782, the book was the first […]

Nantucket History & People

Meeting the Captain – Herman Melville

~ by Amy Jenness ~ author of On This Day in Nantucket History, available at Mitchell’s Book Corner. A year after publishing his novel Moby-Dick, Herman Melville visited Nantucket for the first, and only, time on July 6, 1852. Melville travelled with his father-in-law Massachusetts Chief Justice Lemuel Shaw. During […]