Mardi

Mardi: and a Voyage Thither is the third book by American writer Herman Melville, first published in London in 1849. Beginning as a travelogue in the vein of the author's two previous efforts, the adventure story gives way to a romance story, which in its turn gives way to a philosophical quest.

==Overview== Mardi is Melville's first purely fictional work, which the Preface calls a "romance." Although Melville and his publishers presented his first two books, Typee and Omoo, as factual, the Preface to Mardi says that since these two "in many quarters, were received with incredulity, the thought occurred to me, of indeed writing a romance of Polynesian adventure." Melville went on somewhat ironically, that this was "to see whether, the fiction, might not, possibly be received as a verity."