Herman Melville was born in 1819,
making 2019 his 200th Anniversary Year.
Celebrate his genius with us at Bird & Beckett!

Come at 2pm to Bird & Beckett to hear readings by the Melville Society from Moby Dick, Melville’s masterpiece about Captain Ahab and his obsessive quest for the great white whale, Moby Dick.

Sign up on the spot to read aloud from the book
in the twenty-four hour marathon to take place at the
Maritime Museum on Beach Street at San Francisco’s Aquatic Park
October 19th-20th

Once we’ve really heard the book from the hardy crew that awaits you later at the marathon, Walker Brents III plumbs the depths of Melville’s mind from his childhood intellectual maturation — signaled by his matriculation into the English Department of his grammar and prep school on Sept. 28, 1829, at age ten — to his thirst and quest for a life at sea in his early twenties, to the flowering of his literary genius, penning his first novel, Typee, in his mid-twenties and Moby Dick as he turned thirty.

A few months after the ten-year old Herman Melville started 4th grade,  his father wrote to a friend:

 Herman I think is making more progress than formerly, & without being a bright Scholar, he maintains a respectable standing, & would proceed further, if he could only be induced to study more—being a most amiable & innocent child, I cannot find it in my heart to coerce him.

Obviously, there’s great hope for all our children! Hear the tale of Captain Ahab, and the tale of young Herman Melville, in search of Moby Dick, the Great White Whale!