Herman Melville
By: Elizabeth Hardwick
Series: Penguin lives series
Publisher: Viking
Published: 2000
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 161
ISBN-13: 9780670891580
Subjects: American Novelists; Biography; Romanciers américains
Description: The complex author of the quintessential American masterpiece is demystified by a leading contemporary critic. Hardwick's novelistic flair reveals a former whaleship deck-hand whose voyages were the stuff of travel romances that seduced the public. A single novel, an eternal classic, established him as a founding father of American literature. Now, a century after his death, a new popular surge of interest in Herman Melville calls for Elizabeth Hardwick's rich analysis of "the whole of Melville's works, uneven as it is, & the challenging shape of his life, a story of the creative history of an extraordinary American genius." Hardwick's superb critical interpretation & award-winning novelistic flair reveal a former whaleship deck hand whose voyages were the stuff of travel romances that seduced the public. Later, a self-described "thought-diver" into "the truth of the human heart" Melville harbored a bitterness that knew no bounds when that same public failed to embrace his masterwork, Moby-Dick. Invaluable for enthusiasts of American literature, Herman Melville is itself a masterpiece of critical commentary in the tradition of D.H. Lawrence's Studies in Classic American Literature.
Notes: "A Lipper/Viking book."

Includes bibliographical references (p. 161).

Also issued online.
Table of contents: title: Whaling; title: New York; title: Redburn; title: Typee; title: Elizabeth; title: Omoo, Mardi; title: Moby-Dick; title: Family, Pierre, "Benito Cereno," "Bartleby, the Scrivener"; title: Marriage, The Confidence-Man; title: Hawthorne; title: Billy Budd; title: Death; title: Afterword; title: Bibliography.