Moby Dick; Or, The Whale

by Herman Melville

Overview

American author Herman Melville published his first novel, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, in 1851. The story of Ahab, the captain of the whaling ship Pequod, and his irrational pursuit for vengeance against Moby Dick, the huge white sperm whale that wounded him on a previous journey, is told in the book by the sailor Ishmael. Moby-Dick, a work that contributed to the literature of the American Renaissance, had received mixed reviews upon publication, was a commercial flop, and was out of print when the author passed away in 1891. It wasn't until the 20th century, on the centennial of its author's birth in 1919, that it gained recognition as a "Great American Novel." William Faulkner expressed regret for not having written the novel himself, while D. H. Lawrence praised it as "the best book of the sea ever written" and "one of the oddest and most wonderful books in the world." One of the most well-known starting lines in all of literature is "Call me Ishmael." Moby-Dick was started by Melville in February 1850, and it was finished a year later than he had intended, in 18 months. Melville drew on his observations as a common sailor between 1841 and 1844, especially those of whalers, as well as extensive reading in the literature on whaling.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9789357278942
Publisher:	Double 9 Books
Publication date:	01/01/2023
Pages:	586
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Herman Melville was born in August 1, 1819, in New York City, the son of a merchant. Only twelve when his father died bankrupt, young Herman tried work as a bank clerk, as a cabin-boy on a trip to Liverpool, and as an elementary schoolteacher, before shipping in January 1841 on the whaler Acushnet, bound for the Pacific. Deserting ship the following year in the Marquesas, he made his way to Tahiti and Honolulu, returning as ordinary seaman on the frigate United States to Boston, where he was discharged in October 1844. Books based on these adventures won him immediate success. By 1850 he was married, had acquired a farm near Pittsfield, Massachussetts (where he was the impetuous friend and neighbor of Nathaniel Hawthorne), and was hard at work on his masterpiece Moby-Dick.

Literary success soon faded; his complexity increasingly alienated readers. After a visit to the Holy Land in January 1857, he turned from writing prose fiction to poetry. In 1863, during the Civil War, he moved back to New York City, where from 1866-1885 he was a deputy inspector in the Custom House, and where, in 1891, he died. A draft of a final prose work, Billy Budd, Sailor, was left unfinished and uncollated, packed tidily away by his widow, where it remained until its rediscovery and publication in 1924.

Date of Birth:

August 1, 1819

Date of Death:

September 28, 1891

Place of Birth:

New York, New York

Place of Death:

New York, New York

Education:

Attended the Albany Academy in Albany, New York, until age 15