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Herman Melville

Born

in New York City, The United States

August 01, 1819

Died

September 28, 1891

Genre

Fiction, Poetry, Short Stories

Influences

Thomas Browne, Nathaniel Hawthorne, John Milton, Edgar Allan Poe, Will ...more

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There is more than one author with this name

Herman Melville was an American novelist, short story writer, and poet of the American Renaissance period. Among his best-known works are Moby-Dick (1851); Typee (1846), a romanticized account of his experiences in Polynesia; and Billy Budd, Sailor, a posthumously published novella. At the time of his death, Melville was no longer well known to the public, but the 1919 centennial of his birth was the starting point of a Melville revival. Moby-Dick eventually would be considered one of the great American novels.
Melville was born in New York City, the third child of a prosperous merchant whose death in 1832 left the family in dire financial straits. He took to sea in 1839 as a common sailor on a mer There is more than one author with this name

Herman Melville was an American novelist, short story writer, and poet of the American Renaissance period. Among his best-known works are Moby-Dick (1851); Typee (1846), a romanticized account of his experiences in Polynesia; and Billy Budd, Sailor, a posthumously published novella. At the time of his death, Melville was no longer well known to the public, but the 1919 centennial of his birth was the starting point of a Melville revival. Moby-Dick eventually would be considered one of the great American novels.
Melville was born in New York City, the third child of a prosperous merchant whose death in 1832 left the family in dire financial straits. He took to sea in 1839 as a common sailor on a merchant ship and then on the whaler Acushnet, but he jumped ship in the Marquesas Islands. Typee, his first book, and its sequel, Omoo (1847), were travel-adventures based on his encounters with the peoples of the islands. Their success gave him the financial security to marry Elizabeth Shaw, the daughter of the Boston jurist Lemuel Shaw. Mardi (1849), a romance-adventure and his first book not based on his own experience, was not well received. Redburn (1849) and White-Jacket (1850), both tales based on his experience as a well-born young man at sea, were given respectable reviews, but did not sell well enough to support his expanding family.
Melville's growing literary ambition showed in Moby-Dick (1851), which took nearly a year and a half to write, but it did not find an audience, and critics scorned his psychological novel Pierre: or, The Ambiguities (1852). From 1853 to 1856, Melville published short fiction in magazines, including "Benito Cereno" and "Bartleby, the Scrivener". In 1857, he traveled to England, toured the Near East, and published his last work of prose, The Confidence-Man (1857). He moved to New York in 1863, eventually taking a position as a United States customs inspector.
From that point, Melville focused his creative powers on poetry. Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War (1866) was his poetic reflection on the moral questions of the American Civil War. In 1867, his eldest child Malcolm died at home from a self-inflicted gunshot. Melville's metaphysical epic Clarel: A Poem and Pilgrimage in the Holy Land was published in 1876. In 1886, his other son Stanwix died of apparent tuberculosis, and Melville retired. During his last years, he privately published two volumes of poetry, and left one volume unpublished. The novella Billy Budd was left unfinished at his death, but was published posthumously in 1924. Melville died from cardiovascular disease in 1891. ...more

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Herman Melville’s books

Average rating: 3.61 · 811,403 ratings · 46,551 reviews · 3,061 distinct works • Similar authors

	Moby-Dick or, The Whale 3.57 avg rating — 632,322 ratings — published 1851 — 11 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Bartleby the Scrivener 3.93 avg rating — 79,236 ratings — published 1853 — 2093 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Billy Budd, Sailor 3.20 avg rating — 20,146 ratings — published 1924 — 522 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Benito Cereno 3.53 avg rating — 10,287 ratings — published 1855 — 431 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Typee: A Peep at Polynesian Life 3.56 avg rating — 6,215 ratings — published 1846 — 1451 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Billy Budd and Other Stories by Herman Melville, Frederick Busch (Introduction) 3.56 avg rating — 4,891 ratings — published 1782 — 73 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Confidence-Man by Herman Melville, John Dugdale (Editor), Tony Tanner (Introduction) 3.62 avg rating — 3,658 ratings — published 1857 — 6 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Bartleby and Benito Cereno by Herman Melville, Stanley Appelbaum (Editor) 3.77 avg rating — 2,902 ratings — 37 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Pierre; or, The Ambiguities by Herman Melville, Maurice Sendak (Illustrator), Hershel Parker (Editor) 3.65 avg rating — 1,507 ratings — published 1852 — 322 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Herman Melville: Redburn, White-Jacket, Moby-Dick by Herman Melville, G. Thomas Tanselle (Editor) 4.20 avg rating — 1,099 ratings — published 1851 — 3 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

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Series by Herman Melville

The Greatest Writers of All Time (59 books)
by

Herman Melville

4.28 avg rating — 121,731 ratings

At the beginning of each calendar month, Goodreads’ editorial team assembles a list of the hottest and most popular new books hitting shelves,...

Polls

2015 Fourth Quarter Long Read

1978, The Stand by Stephen King, 1153 pages

27 votes, 18.0%

1853, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale by Herman Melville, 663 pages

25 votes, 16.7%

1853, Bleak House by Charles Dickens, 1017 pages

16 votes, 10.7%

1879, The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, 796 pages

15 votes, 10.0%

1868, The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, 667 pages

13 votes, 8.7%

1847, Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray, 867 pages

11 votes, 7.3%

1924, The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann, 706 pages

10 votes, 6.7%

1812, The Complete Grimm's Fairy Tales by Jacob Grimm, 880 pages

9 votes, 6.0%

1982, North and South by John Jakes, 812 pages

7 votes, 4.7%

1915, Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham, 684 pages

6 votes, 4.0%

1973, Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon, 776 pages

4 votes, 2.7%

1920, Kristin Lavransdatter by Sigrid Undset, 1168 pages

3 votes, 2.0%

1794, The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe, 654 pages

3 votes, 2.0%

1901, Captains and the Kings by Taylor Caldwell, 816 pages

1 vote, 0.7%

1948, The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer, 721 pages

0 votes, 0.0%

1876, Daniel Deronda by George Eliot, 796 pages

0 votes, 0.0%

150 total votes

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