Herman Melville (1819–1891) was a prolific novelist and poet, but he is known today as the author of a single book. This is not altogether unjust, for Moby-Dick (1851) is the most extraordinary novel in English. It is extraordinary in all its parts, from the black-hearted majesty of its theme to the versatility of its startling prose. It is direct and unadorned when plain speaking and rough-edged humor are called for, yet shot through with Shakespearean lightning when high tragic solemnity sets the scene ablaze. Melville expounds with encyclopedic authority upon everything you might ever care (or not care) to know about whales and whaling. He showcases both the sheer cosmopolitan variety of American society and the riveting exploits of a few remarkable men, ruthless seekers after the supernatural amid the beauty and the terror of the natural world.

Melville had to endure seeing his masterpiece sell a few thousand copies and go out of print. He had not always been a commercial failure, or a critical one. Success came early to him with the publication of his first novel, Typee: A Peep at Polynesian Life (1846), a loosely autobiographical yarn based on his desertion from a whaleship and his sojourn on a South Pacific island among natives who, in the novel at least, eat human flesh. He became known, much to his displeasure, as the man who lived among the