[Unaffiliated] Herman Melville's Israel Potter

This meetup is hosted by Modernist Fiction, It's Origins and Beyond. For more details and to RSVP, please go to to: https://www.meetup.com/modernistfiction/events/307816350

To commemorate the 250th Anniversary of the Battle of Bunker Hill, please join Modernist Fiction, It's Origins and Beyond for a discussion and read through of Herman Melville's Israel Potter.

Based on the life of an actual soldier who claimed to have fought at Bunker Hill, Israel Potter is unique among Herman Melville's books: a novel in the guise of a biography. In telling the story of Israel Potter's fall from Revolutionary War hero to peddler on the streets of London, where he obtained a livelihood by crying "Old Chairs to Mend," Melville alternated between invented scenes and historical episodes, granting cameos to such famous men of the era as Benjamin Franklin (Potter may have been his secret courier) and John Paul Jones, and providing a portrait of the American Revolution as the rollicking adventure and violent series of events that it really was.