...seed, being planted in English soil, it developed itself, grew to greenness, and then fell to mould. So I. Until I was twenty-five, I had no development at all. From my twenty-fifth year [that is, after his return from sea in 1844] I date my life. Three weeks have scarcely passed, at any...

...whale ship. He himself seems to have been aware of this when, in June 1851, he wrote to Hawthorne: "Until I was twenty-five, I had no development at...and now, that I have not unfolded within myself." Melville was twenty-five in 1844. Most of his writing was done during the next seven years. And it...

...half years of whaling and wandering in the Pacific and, at the age of twenty-five, began to write. "Three weeks have scarcely passed, at any time between then and now," he explained, "that I have not unfolded within myself."1 The unfolding within i. Documentation of this...

...incapable 20. Indeed, he wrote Hawthorne that there was little in his early years that was memorable: "Until I was twenty-five, I had no development at all. From my twenty-fifth year I date my life." The Letters of Herman Melville, ed. Merrell R. Davis and William H. Oilman (New Haven: Yale University...

...being planted in English soil, it developed itself, grew to greenness, and then fell to mould. So L Until I was twenty-five, I had no development at all...and now, that I have not unfolded within myself. But I feel that I am now come to the inmost leaf of the bulb, and that shortly the flower must fall to...

...take to be one major implication of his famous comment in a letter to Hawthorne of early June, 1851: Until I was twenty-five, I had no development at all....weeks have scarcely passed, at any time between then & now [ie, 1845—1851], that I have not unfolded within myself." (Leyda:l:413) Melville was twenty-five...

...Melville was twentyfive years old. In a letter to [Nathaniel] Hawthorne, seven years later, he wrote, "Until I was twenty-five, I had no development at...and now, that I have not unfolded within myself." What had Melville been doing during those seven years of growth? The answer is, writing. From age twenty-five...

...seed, being planted in English soil, it developed itself, grew to greenness, and then fell to mould. So I. Until I was twenty-five, I had no development...scarcely passed, at any time between then and now, diat I have not unfolded widiin myself. But I feel diat I am now come to the inmost leaf of the bulb,...

...at all," Melville wrote to Hawthorne in 1851, looking back to the beginnings of his writing career. "From my twenty-fifth year I date my life. Three weeks...then and now, that I have not unfolded within myself (Correspondence 193). The occasion for this confession was the completion of Moby-Dick, certainly the...

...seed, being planted in English soil, it developed itself, grew to greenness, and then fell to mould. So I. Until I was twenty-five, I had no development at all. From my twenty-fifth year 1 date my life. Three weeks have scarcely passed, at any time between then and now, that I have not...