The "Material Autobiography" of Melville's Print Collection Online

Abstract:Melville's Print Collection Online (MPCO) is a digital humanities website designed to exhibit, document, and interpret the 420 prints we know (so far) that Melville collected. Three of eight planned chapters have been completed and are available on the site. MPCO offers high-resolution images and discussions of the prints in relation to art history; to Melville's fiction, poetry, journals, and correspondence; and to his life as author and collector. In this essay we consider Melville's acquisition of prints as what Susan M. Pearce, in On Collecting, terms an "act of imagination"; we describe the structure of the site; and we analyze three examples that convey MPCO's range of images and approaches, the discoveries that the Web has enabled, and the interpretive possibilities that the site affords. These examples span a range of techniques (line engraving, lithograph, mezzotint) and topics (Greek tragedy, topographical view, biblical miracle) and relate to issues prominent in Melville's writing and life: the reach of imagination, the geography of politics, and the intimacies of absence and presence.