Moby-Dick; or, The Whale (1851) is a novel by Herman Melville considered an outstanding work of Romanticism and the American Renaissance. A sailor called Ishmael narrates the obsessive 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 20th century. William Faulkner confessed he wished he had written it himself, and D....

Herman Melville (August 1, 1819 - September 28, 1891) was an American novelist, short story writer, and poet from the American Renaissance period. Most of his writings were published between 1846 and 1857. Best known for his sea adventure Typee (1846) and his whaling novel Moby-Dick (1851), he was almost forgotten during the last thirty years of his life. Melville's writing draws on his experience at sea as a common sailor, exploration of literature and philosophy, and engagement in the contradictions of American society in a period of rapid change. The main characteristic of his style is...

Based on the life of an actual soldier who claimed to have fought at Bunker Hill, Israel Potter is unique among Herman Melville's books: a novel in the guise of a biography. In telling the story of Israel Potter's fall from Revolutionary War hero to peddler on the streets of London, where he obtained a livelihood by crying "Old Chairs to Mend," Melville alternated between invented scenes and historical episodes, granting cameos to such famous men of the era as Benjamin Franklin (Potter may have been his secret courier) and John Paul Jones, and providing a portrait of the American Revolution...

Geroj romana Tajpi, matros kitobojnogo sudna doveden do otchajanija zhestokim obrashheniem na sudne, dedovshhinoj i surovymi telesnymi nakazanijami, i reshaetsja bezhat', prihvativ s soboj prijatelja. Ponachalu, jetot plan druz'jam-robinzonam kazhetsja horoshim, no naprasno, ibo dlja pobega oni vybrali Markizskie ostrova, prekrasnejshee na Zemle mesto, kishashhee kannibalami. Osnovannye na sobstvennom opyte romany Tajpi, ili Beglyj vzgljad na polinezijskuju zhizn' (Turee: or A Peep at Polynesian Life, 1846) i Omu: povest' o prikljuchenijah v Juzhnyh morjah (Omoo: A Narrative of Adventures in...