A comprehensive examination of the significance of women in Melville's life and work The twelve new essays in this collection extend the interest in Melville and women evident in recent scholarship, biography, art, and drama. Throughout his life, Melville lived surrounded by women, and he wove women's experiences into most of his literary work, early and late. Treating his poetry and prose and using a variety of theoretical approaches from the biographical to the ecocritical, the essays focus not only on Melville's female characters but also on gender roles, colonialism, intertextuality,...