Moby-Dick

". . . the greatest of American novels."--The Atlantic Monthly A masterpiece of storytelling and symbolic realism, this thrilling maritime adventure and epic saga pits Ahab, a brooding and vengeful sea captain, against the great white whale that crippled him and came to dominate his life. But more than just the tale of a hair-raising voyage, Melville's riveting story passionately probes the human soul. A literary classic first published in 1851,Moby-Dickremains among the most highly acclaimed novels of the sea and a powerful account of the ultimate human struggle.

Herman Melville was Born in New York, the son of a merchant, and was largely self-educated. He started writing after having first sailed to Liverpool in 1839, where he joined the whaler Acushnet bound for the Pacific. Deserting the ship the following year in the Marquesas, he made his way to Tahiti and Honolulu, returning as an ordinary seaman to Boston, where he was discharged in October 1844. Books based on these adventures, including Moby-Dick, won him immediate success. This literary attention soon faded, however, as his works' complexity increasingly alienated readers. Melville died virtually forgotten in 1891. and it was not until the 1920s that he received recognition as a key figure in American literature Nathaniel Philbrick, A Leading authority on the history of Nantucket, is director of the Egan Institute of Maritime Studies and a research fellow at the Nantucket Historical Association