"Chronicles the life and career of American author Herman Melville, uncovering autobiographical elements in his diverse works, discussing the historical and cultural implications of his writing, and assessing his accomplishments as a writer."@en
"Chronicles the life and career of American author Herman Melville, uncovering autobiographical elements in his diverse works, discussing the historical and cultural implications of his writing, and assessing his accomplishments as a writer."
"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."@en
"Presents a biography of nineteenth-century author Herman Melville, and traces his rise and eventual decline in both critical and popular reception against the backdrop of 19th-century America."