{\b Herman Melville}.

{\b Date of Birth}.: 1 August 1819 

{\b Date of Death}.: 28 September 1891

{\b Works}.

American novelist, poet and short story writer.

 Best known for his novels of the sea including Moby Dick (1851). His other 
works include Typee (1846), Omoo (1847), White-Jacket (1850), Pierre, or the 
Ambiguities (1852), Israel Potter: His Fifty Years of Exile (1855), the 
satirical The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade (1857), four collections of verse 
including Timoleon (1891) and a number of sketches and short stories for 
magazines, some of which were collected in The Piazza Tales (1856).

{\b Featured Works}.

'Immolated', 'Sheridan at Cedar Creek', 'Shiloh', 'The Mound by the Lake', 
'The Maldive Shark', 'In the Pauper's Turnip-Field', 'The Temeraire', 'Father 
Mapple's Hymn, from "Moby Dick"', 'Falstaff's Lament Over Prince Hal Become 
Henry V', 'Malvern Hill', 'Chattanooga', '"Gold in the Mountain"', 'The 
House-Top', 'The Enthusiast', 'From the Conflict of Convictions'.

{\b General Comment}.

Melville was the third of eight children born to Allan and Maria Gansevoort 
Melville, fairly wealthy middle-class descendants of Scottish and Dutch 
settlers.  He attended Albany Classical School in 1835 and Lansinburgh Academy 
in 1837 but was mainly self-taught. 
His early life was spend in almost ceaseless travel. His family moved from New 
York City to Albany and to Lansinburgh. Following his first naval voyage in 
1839 to Liverpool, Melville sailed for years as a whaler and in the US Navy. 
He visited the islands of the South Sea, Tahiti and Hawaii and was also later 
to spend time in Europe and Morocco. In 1847 he married Elizabeth Shaw, with 
whom he had four children including two sons who died prematurely.

 Melville was much influenced by Shakespeare and the Bible, as well as by 
Nathaniel Hawthorne with whom he had a close friendship until 1856 when they 
drifted apart. Many of his works have disguised autobiographical themes. All 
his six first novels share the themes of sea travel although the realistic 
travels described in Omoo and Typee differ greatly from the allegorical and 
spiritual journey of, for example, Moby Dick. 
Melville's early work was well-received, but after the publication of Moby 
Dick his popularity diminished. His disappointment was such that after the 
failure of his darkly comic novel The Confidence Man, he moved to New York 
City in 1863 and worked for many years in a customs house in the city's 
harbour. 
Melville is now considered not only a great writer with many original talents, 
but also a shrewd social critic and philosopher.