"Call me Ishmael". So begins Moby-Dick, Herman Melville's epic account of the last voyage of the ill-fated whaling ship Pequod, and its captain's obsessive pursuit of the legendary white whale that maimed him years before. Melville's classic novel has given American literature some of its most iconic characters. Inspired by the real-life ordeal of the crew of the whaling ship Essex--who, in 1819, were set adrift in the heart of the sea for eighty-nine...

Mocha Dick was the name sailors gave to the notorious sperm whale often encountered in the Pacific Ocean in the early 19th century. Herman Melville drew on this story in his classic novel "Moby Dick."

When he died in 1891, the author of “Moby-Dick” was an obscure figure in American literature. This 1921 biography, placing Melville in the context of his Yankee heritage and drawing from his correspondence with Nathaniel Hawthorne, is largely responsible for reassessing Melville's reputation and restoring him to his rightful place in the literary pantheon.

"In Melville in Love Pulitzer Prize-finalist Michael Shelden sheds light on this literary mystery to tell a story of Melvilles passionate, obsessive, and clandestine affair with a married woman named Sarah Morewood, whose libertine impulses encouraged and sustained Melvilles own. In his research, Shelden discovered unexplored documents suggesting that, in their shared resistance to the 2iron rule3 of social conformity, Sarah and Melville had forged...

"Dayswork tells the story of a woman who spends the endless days of the pandemic sorting fact from fiction in the life and work of Herman Melville. Obsessed by what his devotion to his art reveals about cost, worth, and debt, she delves into Melville's impulsive purchase of a Massachusetts farmhouse, his fevered revision of Moby-Dick there, his intense friendship with neighbor Nathaniel Hawthorne, and his troubled and troubling marriage to Elizabeth...