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.[3]
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.[2]
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.[4] 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.[2][5]
To flesh out his narrative, Melville used several source books from which he took passages and rewrote them. The most important of these source books are William Ellis, Polynesian Researches from 1833, George H. von Langsdorff, Voyages and Travels in Various Parts of the World from 1813, David Porter, Journal of a Cruise Made to the Pacific Ocean in the U.S. Frigate Essex from 1815, and Charles S. Stewart, A Visit to the South Seas in the U.S. ship Vincennes from 1831.[6]
