Moby-Dick; Or, The Whale (Illustrated & Annotated) (Great American Novel (GAN) Book 3)

Third volume in the series “Great American Novel”.
This series includes some books referenced as GAN.
The idea of the Great American Novel (GAN) is the concept of a novel of high literary merit that shows the culture of the United States at a specific time in the country's history. The novel is presumably written by an American author who is knowledgeable about the state, culture, and perspective of the common United States citizen. The author uses the literary work to identify and exhibit the language used by the people of the U.S. during that time and to capture the unique experience of living in the U.S. or one part of the U.S., especially at that time. In historical terms, it is sometimes equated as being the U.S. response to the national epic.

About the series. GAN (Great American Novel).
VOLUME 1. 1826 The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper (Illustrated by N.C. Wyeth. Annotated by “Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses” by Mark Twain.)
VOLUME 2. 1850 The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne (Illustrated by Mary Hallock. Annotated by “Hawthorne” by Henry James.
VOLUME 3. 1851 Moby-Dick by Herman Melville (Illustrated by Mead Schaeffer. Annotated by Raymond Melbourne Weaver).
VOLUME 4. 1852 Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe .
VOLUME 5. 1876 The Adventures of Tom Sawyer / 1884 Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain.
VOLUME 6. 1925 The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald.
VOLUME 7. 1925 An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser.
VOLUME 8. 1932 Light in August / 1936 Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner.

“Moby-Dick; Or, The Whale” (1851) is a novel by Herman Melville considered an outstanding work of Romanticism and the American Renaissance. Ishmael narrates the monomaniacal quest of Ahab, captain of the whaler Pequod, for revenge on Moby Dick, a white whale which on a previous voyage destroyed Ahab's ship and severed his leg at the knee. Although the novel was a commercial failure and out of print at the time of the author's death in 1891, its reputation as a Great American Novel grew during the twentieth century. William Faulkner confessed he wished he had written it himself, and D. H. Lawrence called it "one of the strangest and most wonderful books in the world", and "the greatest book of the sea ever written". "Call me Ishmael" is one of world literature's most famous opening sentences. The product of a year and a half of writing, the book is dedicated to Nathaniel Hawthorne, "in token of my admiration for his genius", and draws on Melville's experience at sea, on his reading in whaling literature, and on literary inspirations such as Shakespeare and the Bible. The detailed and realistic descriptions of whale hunting and of extracting whale oil, as well as life aboard ship among a culturally diverse crew, are mixed with exploration of class and social status, good and evil, and the existence of God. In addition to narrative prose, Melville uses styles and literary devices ranging from songs, poetry and catalogs to Shakespearean stage directions, soliloquies and asides.

Herman Melville: Mariner and Mystic (1921) was the first full-length study of Melville. Weaver presents Melville as a disappointed and disillusioned genius who rebelled against social convention and paid the price: "His whole history is the record of an attempt to escape from an inexorable and intolerable world of reality." Weaver praises Melville for establishing the South Seas as a suitable topic for literature and for his depictions of a sailor's sea-life, but saved his highest praise for Moby-Dick, Melville's "undoubted masterpiece.