person1819–1891

Herman Melville

Disciplines:

Summary

American novelist — author of Moby-Dick and Bartleby, the Scrivener — who died in obscurity but whose reputation was fully restored in the 1920s — whose work is now considered the pinnacle of American Romanticism.

Core Contribution

Creates Moby-Dick as the supreme American novel — Melville's synthesis of whaling encyclopaedia, philosophical meditation, Shakespearean tragedy, and Calvinist theology into a story about a captain's monomaniacal pursuit of a white whale is the most ambitious American novel and the definitive American literary symbol for obsession.

Key Spikes & Highlights

Died thinking himself a failure — Moby-Dick sold only 3,000 copies in Melville's lifetime; he died believing his greatest work a commercial catastrophe; the Melville Revival of the 1920s restored his reputation entirely posthumously; the 70-year gap between composition and recognition is the longest in American literary history for a major work
The cetology chapters (encyclopaedic descriptions of whales and whaling) constitute one-third of Moby-Dick and have no narrative function — critics have debated for 170 years whether they are artistic genius (thematic amplification) or structural failure; the debate has generated more literary criticism than any other formal choice in American fiction

Notable Works & Achievements

Typee

Omoo

Moby-Dick

Pierre

Bartleby, the Scrivener

Billy Budd

Historical Influences

Shakespeare Thomas Carlyle Nathaniel Hawthorne

Intellectual Lineage

New York Merchant marine and whaling ships Literary career New York Custom House Moby-Dick

Contemporaries & Peers

Nathaniel Hawthorne Walt Whitman Emerson

Minds Influenced

American literature

Intellectual Posterity

Moby-Dick Bartleby, the Scrivener Ahab Moby Dick

Discussing

Herman Melville

Ask anything about Herman Melville — their ideas, influences, contradictions, legacy.

person1819–1891

Herman Melville

Disciplines:

fiction

american history/america

whaling

history/19th century

Summary

Core Contribution

Key Spikes & Highlights

Died thinking himself a failure — Moby-Dick sold only 3,000 copies in Melville's lifetime; he died believing his greatest work a commercial catastrophe; the Melville Revival of the 1920s restored his reputation entirely posthumously; the 70-year gap between composition and recognition is the longest in American literary history for a major work
The cetology chapters (encyclopaedic descriptions of whales and whaling) constitute one-third of Moby-Dick and have no narrative function — critics have debated for 170 years whether they are artistic genius (thematic amplification) or structural failure; the debate has generated more literary criticism than any other formal choice in American fiction