Herman Melville drew upon his adventurous travels on sea and land for the primary materials of his greatest fiction and poetry. Out of his experiences in the merchant service (1839), the whaling industry (1841- 1843), and the United States Navy...

Herman Melville, who died almost forgotten although he had once been a popular author and had left behind ten notable books of prose fiction and four of verse, has gathered increasing fame, especially for his metaphysical whaling novel, Moby-Dick...

Herman Melville, who died almost forgotten although he had once been a popular author and had left behind ten notable books of prose fiction and four of verse, has gathered increasing fame, especially for his metaphysical whaling novel, Moby-Dick. Like...

Herman Melville - (1819 - 1891) American novelist, short story writer, and poet. Melville, a major American literary figure of the nineteenth century, is best known as the author of Moby-Dick; or, The Whale (1851), a complex metaphysical novel that is...

Herman Melville (August 1 1819 – September 28 1891) was an American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and poet. His first two books gained much attention, though they were not bestsellers, and his popularity declined precipitously only a few...

The Rosenbach Museum & Library is celebrating the work of Maurice Sendak with an expansion of its gallery space and "Really Rosie," a new show exploring the children's book author's collaboration with singer-songwriter Carole King."Really Rosie," perhaps best known to people who grew up in...

It was reportedly scrawled in red ink on the arm of the Virginia Tech gunman after his shooting rampage that left him and 32 others dead. It was written on an overnight postage Seung-Hui Cho sent between the two shootings. And a variation of it...

You must be feeling pretty good about yourselves these days, ever since those Norwegian epidemiologists conferred the equivalent of intellectual primogeniture on all of you. And truth be told, we’d be feeling pretty good about ourselves too if the report had gone the other way...

Elizabeth Hardwick, a Kentucky-born author and critic whose incisive prose and steady spirit helped her well fulfill her dream of becoming a "New York Intellectual," has died at age 91.Hardwick, who lived for decades on Manhattan's Upper West Side, died in her sleep Sunday night...

In the following essay, Schwendinger studies the similarities between Melville's language and the language of nineteenth-century sea shanties—songs with a swinging, or lilting rhythm, often sung by sailors while onboard ship.

In the essay that follows, Thomas studies the significance of human procreation as a figure for writing in Melville's Pierre; the title character's unsuccessful attempt to free himself of his family's past reveals the extent to which the authority of a text's author is fictional.

In the following essay, Beauchamp evaluates the primitive, escapist utopia of Melville's Typee.