Melville: His World and Work

andrew delbanco

If Dickens was nineteenth-century London personified, Herman Melville was the quintessential American. With a historian’s perspective and a critic’s insight, award-winning author Andrew Delbanco marvelously demonstrates that Melville was very much a man of his era and that he recorded — in his books, letters, and marginalia; and in conversations with friends like Nathaniel Hawthorne and with his literary cronies in Manhattan — an incomparable chapter of American history. From the bawdy storytelling of Typee to the spiritual preoccupations building up to and beyond Moby Dick , Delbanco brilliantly illuminates Melville’s life and work, and his crucial role as a man of American letters.

Genres biographyhistorynonfictionliterary criticismliteratureamerican historycriticismamericanunited statesbiography memoir

446 pages, Paperback

First published January 1,2005

Literary awards

lionel trilling book award,

This edition

Format: 446 pages, Paperback
Published: September 12, 2006 by Vintage Books - Random House
ISBN: 9780375702976
ASIN: 0375702970
Language: English

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Herman Melville

Herman Melville

There is more than one author with this nameHerman Melville was an American novelist, short story writer, and poet of the American Renaissance period. Among his best-known works are Moby-Dick (1851); Typee (1846), a romanticized account of his experiences...

About the author

andrew delbanco

Andrew H. Delbanco (born 1952) is Director of American Studies at Columbia University and has been Columbia's Julian Clarence Levi Professor in the Humanities since 1995. He writes extensively on American literary and religious history.