Herman Melville's The Isle of the Cross

HERMAN Melville's Isle of Cross does not appear in any iLl bibliography of his writings, but I will show here that it was title of a work he completed (almost surely as a book, not a short story) and that its subject (almost surely) was what we have long known as the story of Agatha. Had Melville not been prevented from publishing it we would have read writings of his mid-career in this sequence: Moby-Dict, Pierre, Isle of Cross, Israel Potter. In Nathaniel Hawthorne and His Wife Julian Hawthorne printed a letter Melville wrote to Nathaniel Hawthorne from Boston following a visit to Concord a few days before; in it Melville announced his decision to follow Hawthorne's advice and write the story of Agatha himself.1 (Julian Hawthorne gave no date for letter, but Merrell R. Davis and William H. Gilman in I960 dated it 25 November I852, and forthcoming Northwestern-Newberry Letters will place it after December 3 and before December I4.)2 For Julian value of letter was merely as an aid in narrowing possibilities for subject of a story his father had mentioned to Horatio Bridge: The following letter from Herman Melville indicates that he had suggested a story to Hawthorne; but Mr. Melville recently informed present writer that it was a tragic story, and that Hawthorne had not seemed to take to it. It could not, therefore, have been 'more genial' tale which he spoke of to Bridge.3 Nothing was added to Julian Hawthorne's account until Raymond Weaver

Archaeology · Art · Chronology · American and British Literature Analysis · History · Literature: history, themes, analysis · Short Stories in Global Literature

• The Lusiad and “Isle of the Cross”

  Open Access•Russell Gollard, RUSSELL PATRICK GOLLARD•Leviathan•2012

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• Scarlet Letters, Dead Letters

  Elizabeth Hewitt•Yale journal of criticism/ The…•1999

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