Typee

“I may truly pronounce the Typees to be as polished a community as ever the sun shone upon.”

Herman Melville’s first novel, Typee: A Peep at Polynesian Life, is a fictionalized account of his time in the South Pacific Marquesas Islands, and it was his most popular work during his lifetime.

Tommo has been aboard a whaling ship for six months of grueling travel when he decides, with his friend Toby, t...