Herman Melville (1819-1891) was born into a once-affluent family and held several jobs while writing both fiction and poetry. Many of his well-known works were based on his experiences on the water, including Typee, and Omoo, the other two works in Melville's South Seas trilogy, and Moby-Dick, his masterpiece. Often misunderstood by his contemporaries, Melville's works have garnered increasing appreciation from the 1920s onward and now enjoy a strong literary following as classic American works.