Critical Companion to Herman Melville: A Literary Reference to His Life And Work

Praise for the previous edition:
"An excellent resource for scholars of Melville and for undergraduates and graduate students." Choice

"Filled with solid information...useful...will meet the needs of most school libraries." School Library Journal

An excellent resource for scholars of Melville and for undergraduates and graduate students." Choice

Critical Companion to Herman Melville examines the life and work of a writer who spent much of his career in obscurity. Herman Melville has since become known as one of America's greatest novelists, short story writers, and poets. The author of Moby-Dick, Billy Budd, Typee, White-Jacket, "Bartleby the Scrivener," and many other classic works, Melville was rediscovered in the 1920s by a new generation of writers who saw in his writing an evolving sense of modernism. His work is now an integral part of the high school and college curriculum, and writers as diverse as Jack London, William Faulkner, Norman Mailer, and Cormac McCarthy have paid homage to Melville's poetry and prose.

Entries in this comprehensive volume examine the characters and settings of Melville's novels and short stories, the critics and scholars who commented on his work, and his friends and associates, including such prominent literary figures as Oliver Wendell Holmes and Nathaniel Hawthorne. This book also contains all the text of the previously published Herman Melville A to Z, organized in a more user-friendly fashion. New to this edition are critical commentary essays on all of Melville's major stories, poems, and novels; an expanded biography of Melville; new illustrations; and new appendixes, including contemporary reviews of Melville's work, bibliographies, a chronology, a genealogy, and more.

Coverage includes:

A biography of Melville

Synopses and critical assessments of Melville's major and minor works

Details about family, friends, and associates

Analyses of the culture, times, and places in which Melville lived and wrote

Descriptions of whaling, South Seas travel, and other experiences that shaped Melville's work.