“Copyright, 1892, by Elizabeth S. Melville”: Rethinking the Field Formation of Melville Studies

Abstract This chapter focuses particular attention on what might be called the first Melville revival, beginning in 1892 when Elizabeth Shaw Melville returned four of Herman’s novels to print. The essay argues that a considerable amount of the literary labor that Elizabeth expended sits plainly in archival records, where nonetheless Melville scholars rarely find her. As this chapter is not, however, the first reconsideration of Elizabeth’s contributions to her husband’s career, the second half attempts to understand the ways that Melville scholarship over the past fifty years has perennially re-discovered Elizabeth and then, unable to assimilate the discovery, re-forgotten her. To break this cycle, the future of Melville studies may require a rethinking of what scholars designate by the organizing concept-metaphor “Melville”—a rethinking that might expand our scholarly object beyond the man himself to encompass, as well, scenes of collaboration in the family and agencies irreducible to the author’s own.