18th Century--A Road Not Taken

By December 1960, when I gave my seminar paper at the Melville Society meeting in Chicago, my future was decided. I had no idea it would still be going in June 2018 as I finish a retrospective piece on THE WRITINGS OF HERMAN MELVILLE (1965-2017) and work on the Library of America volume on Melville's poetry.

In December 1959 the future was still open. If Phillip Harth (not Philip) had been a little more encouraging . . . .

Today I see that John Churchill is a cousin on my father's side through the Branches, a cousin on my mother's side through the Boleyns, and a more direct cousin through my father's side through Thomas Leigh. And there have to be other routes. If I had known, what would I have said differently in the paper, if anything!

I might very well have become a Romantic scholar. Zera Fink was always very encouraging, and I loved the Romantics. I wrote more papers on the Romantics than in any other period. Well, this box goes back into the garage, and I go back to work on Melville's poetry.