The Albany Academies are attempting to rectify Melville’s obscurity in the Capital Region by hosting a Why Melville Matters conference from November 17-19, 2006. During the winter of 1844-45, he worked on his first novel “Typee” in an attic room overlooking the Hudson River. Melville left Lansingburgh in 1839 but returned in 1843. While in Lansingburgh, Melville attended the Lansingburgh Academy, taught school and published his first writing, “Fragments From A Writing Desk,” in The Democratic Press And Lansingburgh Advertiser. Two years later, after his father died, his mother rented a house in Lansingburgh where the family of seven lived for the next nine years.
While there, he attended the Albany Academy for several months. Melville moved to Albany when he was ten years old. Nineteenth-century American author, Herman Melville, has a strong connection to the Capital District, but the Capital District has not capitalized on that connection like Pittsfield, Massachusetts has (where Melville spent the bulk of his creative years). Note: The following article, which appeared in The Sunday Gazette on October 29, 2006, grew out of an earlier post that I wrote for this blog.
