Typee: A Real Romance of the South Sea

Typee, a Romance of the South Sea is the first book by American writer Herman Melville, a classic in the literature of travel and adventure partly based on his actual experiences as a captive on the island Nuku Hiva, which Melville spelled as Nukuheva, in the South Pacific Marquesas Islands, in 1842. The title comes from the name of a valley there called Tai Pi Vai. It was Melville's most popular work during his lifetime, but made him notorious as the "man who lived among the cannibals." Typee may have provided the writers Robert Louis Stevenson, Louis Becke and Jack London with the themes and images of the Pacific experience: cannibalism, cultural absorption, colonialism, exoticism, eroticism, natural plenty and beauty, and a perceived simplicity of native lifestyle, desires and motives.