Typee: A Peep at Polynesian Life is American writer Herman Melville's first book, published in 1846, when Melville was 26 years old. Considered a classic in travel and adventure literature, the narrative is based on Melville's experiences on the island Nuku Hiva in the South Pacific Marquesas Islands in 1842, supplemented with imaginative reconstruction and research from other books. The title comes from the valley of Taipivai, once known as Taipi. Typee was Melville's most popular work during his lifetime; it made him notorious as the "man who lived among the cannibals". Background From the beginning there were questions about Melville's romantic tale. The London publisher John Murray wanted reassurance that Melville's experiences were first-hand before he included the book in the Home and Colonial Library series, which was nonfiction by or about foreigners in exotic places. Warm but sometimes skeptical reviews also challenged Melville's account. Not long after the book's publication, however, many of the events described were corroborated by Melville's fellow castaway, Richard Tobias Greene ("Toby"). Researchers later discovered an affidavit from the ship's captain that corroborated that Melville and Greene did indeed desert the ship on the island in the summer of 1842. Typee can be seen as a kind of proto-anthropology. Melville continually admits vast ignorance of the culture and language he is describing while also trying to bolster and supplement his own experiences with wide reading and research. He also employs hyperbole and humor. Starting in the 1930s, scholars in the Melville revival questioned Melville's account. For instance, the length of stay on which Typee is based is presented as four months, and this was an exaggeration of Melville's actual stay on the island. There is also not a lake where Melville might have gone canoeing with Fayaway. Critical response Typees narrative expresses a great deal of sympathy for the so-called savages, and even interrogates the use of that word, while focusing the most criticism on European marauders and various missionaries' attempts to evangelize: It may be asserted without fear of contradictions that in all the cases of outrages committed by Polynesians, Europeans have at some time or other been the aggressors, and that the cruel and bloodthirsty disposition of some of the islanders is mainly to be ascribed to the influence of such examples. [The] voluptuous Indian, with every desire supplied, whom Providence has bountifully provided with all the sources of pure and natural