Herman Melville

Herman Melville (1819–1891) was an American novelist, short-story writer, and poet, best known for his masterpiece Moby-Dick (1851). Born in New York City into a once-prosperous family, Melville faced financial hardship after his father's death. In 1841 he signed aboard the whaler Acushnet, and his adventures in the South Pacific—including time among Polynesian islanders—provided rich material for his early works Typee (1846) and Omoo (1847), which brought him popular success.

Melville's ambition peaked with Moby-Dick, a profound allegorical tale of Captain Ahab's obsessive hunt for a white whale. Though now regarded as one of the greatest American novels, it was a commercial failure at the time, as were his later works, including Pierre (1852), the novellas Bartleby, the Scrivener (1853) and Benito Cereno (1855), and The Confidence-Man (1857). He also turned to poetry, publishing the epic Clarel (1876).

Largely forgotten by readers, Melville spent his final decades working as a customs inspector in New York. He died in 1891, leaving the manuscript of Billy Budd, which was published posthumously in 1924. The "Melville Revival" of the 1920s restored his reputation, and today he is celebrated as a towering figure of American literature.