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American author Herman Melville (1819-1891) is best known for his novel Moby-Dick. His work was a response, though often in a negative or ambivalent way, to the romantic movement that dominated American literature in the mid-19th century.
Herman Melville's early autobiographical novels of adventure in the South Seas earned him a popularity that diminished as his writing turned to metaphysical themes and allegorical techniques, moving in directions that later generations would recognize as existentialism, Freudian psychologizing, and blackly comic satire. He had some success with his magazine sketches and short stories, but his poetry, a main concern during the latter part of his life, was ignored. Largely forgotten at the time of his death, he was rediscovered with the shift in taste that followed World War I. His reputation continues to grow, and Moby-Dick has become a world classic.
Melville was born in New York City on Aug. 1, 1819. His father, a merchant and importer, belonged to a well-connected Boston family; he died bankrupt in 1832, survived by his wife and eight children.
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