Melville's Literary Earnings

A page from The Life and Works of Herman Melville

Unlike many other contemporary writers, such as Hawthorne or Thoreau, Melville became a literary celebrity with his first full-length work; ironically, Typee would also mark the peak of his popularity and success as an author. As the charts below reveal, none of his subsequent novels came near to approaching the selling power of his first two Polynesian adventures.

The figures given here are derived from G. Thomas Tanselle's "The Sales of Melville's Books" in Harvard Library Bulletin, 18 (April 1969), pp. 195-215. Consult Tanselle's article for illuminating commentary and detailed statistics on the sales of Melville's books, including figures for publishers' costs and profits, numbers of copies printed, given away, and destroyed, and retail prices.

Melville's Lifetime Literary Earnings

Note: This chart does not represent Melville's entire literary production. It does not list earnings for the magazine articles or for Israel Potter, The Piazza Tales, and The Confidence-Man, for which surviving records are incomplete; nor does it give figures for the volumes of poetry that were published at private expense.

		    UNITED STATES	       UNITED KINGDOM		      TOTALS

		Copies       	            Copies       	        Total       Total
Title		Sold	     Earnings	    Sold	 Earnings (a)   Sales       Earnings
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Typee		9,598	     1,138.61	    6,722	   708.40	16,320	    1,847.01

Omoo		7,403	     1,719.78	    5,932	   644.00	13,335	    2,363.78
 
Mardi		2,900	       740.88	    1,000	   970.65	 3,900      1,711.53

Redburn		4,718	       683.57	      750	   484.00	 5,468	    1,167.57

White-Jacket	4,922	       969.44	    1,000	   968.00	 5,922	    1,937.44

Moby-Dick	3,215	       556.37	      500	   703.08	 3,715	    1,259.45

Pierre		1,821	       157.75	      --	      --	 1,821	      157.75

Battle-Pieces	  471	     - 229.71 (b)     --	      --	   471	    - 229.71
	       ------	     --------	   ------	 --------	------	   ---------
TOTALS	       35,048	     5,736.69 	   15,905	 4,478.13       50,953	   10,214.82

Notes:

(a) Earnings for the United Kingdom are derived not from individual sales, but from flat payments made by the publishers to Melville for the purchase of copyright. For the sake of uniformity, these earnings are given in dollars (Tanselle's figures); the actual payments, of course, were in pounds, as follows: Typee: 100 pounds for the original manuscript, 50 for the "Sequel" of Toby; Omoo: 150 pounds; Mardi: 210 pounds; Redburn: 100 pounds; White-Jacket: 200 pounds; Moby-Dick: 150 pounds.

(b) The production costs of Battle-Pieces exceeded the income derived from sales; this figure represents Melville's half of the debt.

Posthumous Earnings

Several years after Melville's death, two publishing houses in the United States issued limited reprints of his more popular works. The resulting sales figures suggest that there was a small revival of interest in Melville, perhaps occasioned by the news of his death, which began to fade after the turn of the century.

United States Book Company / American Publishers Corporation

February 1 1893 -- August 31 1898

		Copies
		Printed       Copies
Title		(approx.)     Sold	   Royalties
----------------------------------------------------
Typee		2,872	      2,305	   120.36

Omoo		2,697	      2,189	    94.60

White-Jacket	1,999	      1,534	    83.04

Moby-Dick	2,248	      1,787         81.06
			      -----	   ------
TOTALS			      7,815	   379.06

Dana Estes & Co.

February 1 1901 -- January 31 1906

		Copies        Copies
Title		Printed       Sold	   Royalties
----------------------------------------------------
Typee		1,000	       787	   39.35

Omoo		1,000	       572	   28.60

White-Jacket	1,000          379	   18.95

Moby-Dick	1,000	       619	   30.95
			     -----	  ------
TOTALS			     2,357	  117.85

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