Moby Dick

MOBY-DICK HERMAN MELVILLE was born on August 1, 1819, in New York City, the son of a merchant. His father died when he was only twelve, and Herman worked as a bank clerk and later an elementary school teacher before shipping off on a whaling ship bound for the Pacific. Upon his return, he published a number of books based on his experiences at sea, which won him immediate success. By 1850, he was married and had acquired a farm near Pittsfield, Massachusetts, where he wrote Moby-Dick. His later works, including Moby- Dick, became increasingly complex and alienated many of his readers. In 1863, during the Civil War, he moved back to New York City, where he died in 1891. NATHANIEL PHILBRICK is the author of the New York Times best-selling Mayflower (Penguin, 2006), a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for History, and In the Heart of the Sea (Penguin, 2000), winner of the National Book Award. He has lived on the island of Nantucket since 1986. DR. MARY K. BERCAW EDWARDS is an associate professor of English at the University of Connecticut and the author of Melville’s Sources (1987) and Cannibal Old Me: Spoken Sources in Melville’s Early Works (......