The enduring critical reputation of Richard Henry Dana Jr. derives largely from his popular memoir Two Years Before the Mast: A Personal Narrative of Life at Sea (1840), a work addressing what Edgar Allan Poe referred to in an early review as "the exact letter of the sea." Dana's book went beyond strict autobiography, however, by participating in the literary promotion of social reform. With this work, Dana contributed to an ongoing tradition in American letters that formed a vital element in the works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Walt Whitman. In subject and theme, Two Years Before the Mast is an important influence on such authors as Herman Melville, who significantly remarked that he felt connected to Dana "by a sort of Siamese link of affectionate sympathy."

Dana came from a well-established, distinguished Massachusetts family. One of his great-grandfathers had signed the Declaration of Independence...