Moby Dick

Herman Melville was born on August 1, 1819. After his father's death, Melville attempted to support his family by working various jobs, from banking to teaching school. It was his adventures as a seaman in 1845 that inspired Melville to write. On one voyage, he was captured and held for several months. When he returned, friends encouraged Melville to write about his experience. Typee: A Peep at Polynesian Life (Wiley and Putnam, 1846) became his first literary success; the continuation of his adventures appeared in his second book, Omoo (Harper & Brothers, 1847).

After ending his seafaring career, Melville read voraciously. In 1847, he married Elizabeth Shaw and moved first to New York and then the Berkshires. He lived near writer Nathaniel Hawthorne, who became a close friend and confidant. Melville penned Mardi and a Voyage Thither, a philosophical allegory, and Redburn: His First Voyage (Harper & Brothers, 1849), a comedy. Although the latter proved a financial success, Melville immediately returned to the symbolic in his next novel, White-Jacket; or, the World in a Man-of-War (Harper & Brothers, 1850). In 1851, he completed his masterpiece, Moby-Dick, or the Whale (Harper & Brothers). Considered by modern scholars to be one of the great American novels, the book was dismissed by Melville's contemporaries and he made little from the effort. The other two novels that today form the core of the Melville canon—Pierre; or the Ambiguities (Harper & Brothers, 1852) and The Confidence Man (Dix, Edwards & Co., 1857)—met a similar fate.