Moby Dick Book by Herman Melville Art-Type Edition Published by Books Inc

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Moby Dick by Herman Melville Art-Type Edition Published by Books Inc. Hardcover book. There is not a date in the … Read more Moby Dick by Herman Melville Art-Type Edition Published by Books Inc. Hardcover book. There is not a date in the book however I believe it is from the early 20th century. Measurements are: 5.25”W x 2”D x 7.75” H.
Moby-Dick; or, The Whale is an 1851 epic novel by American writer Herman Melville. The book is centered on the sailor Ishmael's narrative of the maniacal quest of Ahab, captain of the whaling ship Pequod, for vengeance against Moby Dick, the giant white sperm whale that bit off his leg on the ship's previous voyage. A contribution to the literature of the American Renaissance, Moby-Dick was published to mixed reviews, was a commercial failure, and was out of print at the time of the author's death in 1891. Its reputation as a Great American Novel was established only in the 20th century, after the 1919 centennial of its author's birth. William Faulkner said he wished he had written the book himself, and D. H. Lawrence called it "one of the strangest and most wonderful books in the world" and "the greatest book of the sea ever written".Its opening sentence, "Call me Ishmael", is among world literature's most famous.
Bio: Herman Melville was born in New York City on August 1, 1819, and raised in upstate New York. After his merchant father, Allan, died, leaving the family in penury, Melville attempted to support his family by working various jobs, from banking to teaching school. It was his adventures as a seaman in 1845 that inspired Melville to write. On one voyage, he was captured and held for several months. When he returned, friends encouraged Melville to write about his experience. Typee: A Peep at Polynesian Life (Wiley and Putnam, 1846) became his first literary success; the continuation of his adventures appeared in his second book, Omoo (Harper & Brothers, 1847).
After ending his seafaring career, Melville read voraciously. In 1847, he married Elizabeth Shaw and moved first to New York and then the Berkshires. He lived near writer Nathaniel Hawthorne, who became a close friend and confidant. Melville penned Mardi and a Voyage Thither, a philosophical allegory, and Redburn: His First Voyage (Harper & Brothers, 1849), a comedy. Although the latter proved a financial success, Melville immediately returned to the symbolic in his next novel, White-Jacket; or, the World in a Man-of-War (Harper & Brothers, 1850). In 1851, he completed his masterpiece, Moby-Dick, or the Whale (Harper & Brothers). Considered by modern scholars to be one of the great American novels, the book was dismissed by Melville’s contemporaries and he made little from the effort. The other two novels that today form the core of the Melville canon—Pierre; or the Ambiguities (Harper & Brothers, 1852) and The Confidence Man (Dix, Edwards & Co., 1857)—met a similar fate.
During the 1850s, Melville supported his family by farming and writing stories for magazines. He traveled to Europe in 1856, where he saw his friend Hawthorne for the last time. During that visit, it was clear to Melville that his novel-writing career was finished. In 1857, after returning to New York still unnoticed by the literary public, he stopped writing fiction. He became a customs inspector, a job he held for twenty years, and began to write poetry.
The Civil War made a deep impression on Melville and became the principal subject of his verse. With so many family members participating in various aspects of the war, Melville found himself intimately connected to it. He observed the Senate’s debating secession during a visit to Washington, D.C., in 1861, and made a trip to the front with his brother in 1864. Melville’s first published book of poems was Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War: Civil War Poems (Harper & Brothers, 1866). The volume is regarded by many critics as a work as ambitious and rich as any of his novels. He went on to write and publish three more volumes of poetry, including Clarel: A Poem and a Pilgrimage (G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1876), to little acclaim.
Melville died of a heart attack on September 28, 1891 at the age of seventy-two. During the week of his death, the New York Times wrote: “There has died and been buried in this city […] a man who is so little known, even by name, to the generation now in the vigor of life that only one newspaper contained an obituary account of him, and this was but of three or four lines.” It wasn’t until the 1920s that the literary public began to recognize Melville as one of America’s greatest writers. See less