Not until the early 20th century was Herman Melville's novel Moby Dick first recognized as a literary masterpiece and touted as a cornerstone of modern American literature. Etching of Joseph O.

Knopf. 415 pp. $30 The life and afterlife of Herman Melville (1819-1891) present the greatest illustration in American literature, perhaps in world literature, of the Psalm "The same stone which the ...

In the first article of this series, I described how Herman Melville was born into a mercantile family which fell on hard times, his adventures as a seaman and harpooner in the Pacific as a young man, ...

Hershel Parker, a longtime Melville scholar, is an archival- research fanatic. Working with Jay Leyda on several new editions of The Melville Log (a long documentary compendium of Melville’s life) in ...

Writing in The Atlantic last year, presumably while finishing work on “The Passages of H. M.,” a novel based on the life of Herman Melville, Jay Parini declared that the historical novel “has become ...