Today's author is Herman Melville.1. He was born August 1, 1819 in New York and died September 28, 1891, also in New York.
2. He was an American novelist, short story writer, essayist and poet.
3. His work is often considered Dark Romanticism.
4. His longest novel, Moby Dick, was recognized in the 20th century as one of the greatest masterpieces of American and world literature.
No American masterpiece casts quite as awesome a shadow as Melville's monumental Moby Dick. Mad Captain Ahab's quest for the White Whale is a timeless epic--a stirring tragedy of vengeance and obsession, a searing parable about humanity lost in a universe of moral ambiguity. It is the greatest sea story ever told. Far ahead of its own time, Moby Dick was largely misunderstood and unappreciated by Melville's contemporaries. Today, however, it is indisputably a classic. As D.H. Lawrence wrote, Moby Dick "commands a stillness in the soul, an awe . . . [It is] one of the strangest and most wonderful books in the world." Read Moby Dick for free in email installments from Daily Lit.
Here's the beginning:
Call me Ishmael. Some years ago--never mind how long precisely--having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen and regulating the circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off--then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball. With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the ship. There is nothing surprising in this.If you've already read it, take a quiz to test your memory.
If they but knew it, almost all men in their degree, some time or other, cherish very nearly the same feelings towards the ocean with me.
5. Here is a listing of his novels:
Typee: A Peep at Polynesian Life (1846)
Omoo: A Narrative of the South Seas (1847)
Mardi: And a Voyage Thither (1849)
Redburn: His First Voyage (1849)
White-Jacket, or The World in a Man-of-War (1850)
Moby-Dick; Or, The Whale (1851)
Pierre: or, The Ambiguities (1852)
Isle of the Cross (ca. 1853, since lost)[28]
Israel Potter: His Fifty Years of Exile (1856)
The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade (1857)
Billy Budd, Sailor (An Inside Narrative) [Published Posthumously] (1924)
Did you know that Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville were neighbors? They published their masterpieces just one year apart.
Have you read Moby Dick? Have you read anything else by Melville?
