Author · 8 titles

Herman Melville

Herman Melville (1819–1891) wrote the American epic that almost nobody wanted until it was too late. Moby-Dick began as a whale hunt and became scripture, encyclopaedia, sermon, and storm — a novel that thinks in every direction at once. Melville had been to sea as a young man; Typee made him briefly famous for Polynesian adventure, then the public cooled as his books grew stranger and more metaphysical. He died in relative obscurity. The twentieth century reversed the verdict. With 8 titles in our catalogue, Melville remains the writer who proved that American literature could be as large, as dark, and as intellectually restless as the ocean it came from.

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