Herman Melville's 1851 American fiction follows narrator Ishmael aboard the Pequod, where Captain Ahab pursues his obsessive quest for revenge against the white whale that destroyed his leg. The novel weaves together adventure, philosophy, and detailed whaling lore in an epic tale of man versus nature.
(Supplied by a Late Consumptive Usher to a Grammar School.) The pale Usher—threadbare in coat, heart, body, and brain; I see him now. He was ever dusting his old lexicons and grammars, with a queer handkerchief, mockingly embellished with all the gay flags of all the known nations of the world. He loved to dust his old grammars; it somehow mildly reminded him of his mortality. “While you take in hand to school others, and to teach them by what name a whale-fish is to be called in our tongue, leaving out, through ignorance, the letter H, which almost alone maketh up the signification of the word, you deliver that which is not true.” —_Hackluyt._Continue reading →
A 19th-century American novelist who drew from his own seafaring adventures to craft some of literature's most profound explorations of humanity and nature. His masterpiece Moby-Dick (1851) revolutionized American fiction with its ambitious blend of adventure, philosophy, and symbolism, though he died in relative obscurity before gaining recognition as one of America's greatest writers. All works by Herman Melville →
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