They move to Lansingburgh, New York.

1838Melville studies surveying at Lansingburgh Academy, in hopes of working as an engineer on the Erie Canal, a plan that never comes to fruition.
1839Melville publishes two installments of “Fragments from a Writing Desk” in the Democratic Press and Lansingburgh Advertiser. The amateurish composition provides insight into Melville’s literary influences; he quotes directly from or
alludes to Thomas Campbell’s The Pleasures of Hope, Robert Burton’s The Anatomy of Melancholy, William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Lord Byron’s Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, Sir Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe, poems by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Greek and Roman mythology.
In June Melville signs on as a crew member on a ship traveling between New York and Liverpool. He finds the grime, poverty, and starvation of Liverpool astonishing and horrifying, and sees for the first time the need for social reform. He returns to the United States in October and takes another teaching position, this time in Greenbush, New York.
1840Melville works as a substitute teacher in Brunswick, New York. He and a friend, Eli James Fly, look for work in Galena, Illinois, near Melville’s uncle.
1841Melville ships as a seaman aboard the Acushnet, a whaling vessel bound from New Bedford, Massachusetts, for the South Seas; the trip provides facts and ideas for Moby-Dick. Before the voyage, he goes to the Seaman’s Bethel and hears a sermon, just as Ishmael listens to Father Mapple in the Whaleman’s Chapel before sailing with the Pequod.
1842Melville deserts ship with Richard T. Greene in the Marquesas Islands and spends several weeks among the natives of the Taipi valley. An Australian whaling ship picks him up on August 9; when they reach Tahiti, he and others are held in light confinement as mutineers after refusing to obey orders from the first mate. Melville befriends the ship’s doctor, and the two become “beachcombers” throughout the Tahitian islands, where they encounter native villages and Catholic and Protestant missionaries.
1843Melville spends four months in the Sandwich Islands (as Hawaii was then called), at Lahaina (Maui) and Honolulu. In August he enlists in the U.S. Navy as an ordinary seaman and sails for home.
1844Back in New York, Melville begins writing about his sailing adventures.
1846With the help of his older brother, Gansevoort, Melville publishes his first book, Typee: A Peep at Polynesian Life, a novel about his stay with the natives in the Marquesas. The
poet Walt Whitman reads the novel and writes in the Brooklyn Eagle that it is “a strange, graceful, most readable book.”
1847Melville publishes Omoo: A Narrative of Adventures in the South Seas, another account of his travels and experiences with natives in the Pacific Islands. Both Typee and Omoo are hugely successful. He begins a friendship with Evert Duyckinck, an editor of The Literary World. Over the course of the next few years, Duyckinck will introduce Melville to William Cullen Bryant, Bayard Taylor, N. P. Willis, probably Washington Irving and Edgar Allan Poe, and other members of the New York literary scene.
In August Melville marries Elizabeth Shaw, daughter of family friend Lemuel Shaw, chief justice of the Supreme Court of Massachusetts. Melville’s attempts to secure a gov ernment appointment in Washington are unsuccessful, and he and Elizabeth settle in New York City. Over the next few years, he writes articles for The Literary World and Yankee Doodle, a satirical magazine modeled on the British maga zine Punch.
1849The Melvilles’ first child, Malcolm, is born. Melville publishes Mardi: And a Voyage Thither, which begins as a Polynesian adventure but becomes a doomed symbolic quest. Mardi is not well received by critics or readers. Melville tries to return to his earlier, more successful storytelling mode with Redburn: His Voyage. Being the Sailor-Boy Confessions and Reminiscences of the Son-of-a-Gentleman, in the Merchant Service; however, his increasing seriousness and melancholy are evident.
1850Melville publishes White-Jacket; Or, The World in a Man-of- War, another unsuccessful attempt to regain his earlier audience. The Melvilles purchase Arrowhead, a farm near Pittsfield, Massachusetts; Nathaniel Hawthorne lives in nearby Lenox, and the two men begin a strong and lasting friendship.
1851Melville publishes Moby-Dick; Or, The Whale, to poor reviews. The Melvilles’ second son, Stanwix, is born.
1852Melville publishes the dark novel Pierre; Or, The Ambiguities; it too fares badly with critics and readers.
1853The Melvilles’ daughter, Elizabeth, is born. Copies of Melville’s books are destroyed in a fire at his publishing house, Harper and Brothers. Because there is not enough demand for his works, the books are not reprinted. Melville writes for Putnam’s Monthly Magazine and Harper’s New Monthly Magazine.
1855Melville publishes Israel Potter, a novel of the Revolutionary War. Elizabeth and Herman have a second daughter, Frances.
1856Melville publishes The Piazza Tales, a collection that in cludes the stories “Bartleby the Scrivener (1853),” “The Encantadas (1854),” and “Benito Cereno (1855),” which had been published in Putnam’s Monthly Magazine.
1856—1857
His physical and emotional health jarred by poor reviews of his novels over the last few years, Melville takes a travel va cation in Europe and the Middle East. He visits Rome, Naples, Syria, Salonica, Jerusalem, Joppa, Beirut, Athens, Alexandria, and Cairo.
1857Melville publishes the dark comedy The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade, a satire on materialism in the United States.
1857—
1860He tries to earn a living as a lecturer.