Moby-Dick (Illustrated by Mead Schaeffer with an Introduction by William S. Ament)

by Herman Melville

Overview

A renewed interest in “Moby-Dick” in the early 20th century would help to establish it as an outstanding work of Romanticism and the American Renaissance, firmly placing it amongst the greatest of all American novels. Based on the real life events depicted in the “Narrative of the Most Extraordinary and Distressing Shipwreck of the Whale-Ship Essex” and the legend of “Mocha Dick”, an albino sperm whale whose killing is described in the May 1839 issue of “The Knickerbocker” magazine, it is the story of a wandering sailor by the name of Ishmael and his voyage aboard the whaling ship the “Pequod.” Commanded by the monomaniacal Captain Ahab, a man who is obsessed with revenge against a white whale of enormous size and ferocity, the “Pequod” and its crew are tasked with the singular goal of the capture and killing of the whale, whatever the cost. “Moby-Dick” is a novel rich with symbolism, full of complex themes, whose composition defies convention. A commercial and critical failure during the author’s lifetime, this classic whaling adventure would ultimately secure the literary legacy of Herman Melville. This edition includes an introduction by William S. Ament, a biographical afterword, and is illustrated by Mead Schaeffer.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781420952278
Publisher:	Digireads.com Publishing
Publication date:	12/14/2015
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Sales rank:	774,650
File size:	8 MB

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