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Melville: His World and Work

Melville: His World and Work

by Andrew Delbanco (Author)

  • Used

    Paperback 2006

    $3.25
Synopsis

Herman Melville was born into a family that in the fledgling republic had lost both money and status. Toughened at sea as a young man, he returned home to chronicle the deepest crises of his time while forever shaping our literature with Moby-Dick, "Bartleby, the Scrivener," Benito Cereno, and Billy Budd. Delbanco traces Melville's growth from the bawdy storytelling of Typee through the spiritual preoccupations building up to Moby-Dick, and the profound disillusionment of later works. He uncovers autobiographical traces throughout Melville's writing, shows the relentless financial pressure and declining critical and popular esteem that plagued his career, and, above all, illuminate the stunning achievements of his oeuvre. Finally we understand how Melville, more than any other American writer, has captured the popular imagination.

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More Information

Format: Paperback
 Pages: 384
 Edition: Main Market
 Publisher: Picador
Published: 20 Oct 2006
ISBN 10: 0330371088
ISBN 13: 9780330371087

Media Reviews
Masterful. . . Delbanco is a fine historian as well as a fine critic - The New Republic An eclectic, humane, historically grounded tribute to Melville's best achievements and a moving account of the troubles that closed in on him. . . . Among recent lives of Melville, this one has no peer for grace of style, vividness of historical evocation, and sympathy for a subject whose flaws and prejudices are nevertheless kept in view. - The New York Review of Books In Andrew Delbanco, Melville has found the perfect combination of biographer and critic [skilled] at re-creating the circumstances -- the historical moment, the physical setting, the emotional state, the spiritual frenzy, that attended Melville's art. - The Wall Street Journal Andrew Delbanco places the enigmatic Herman Melville in a light that is remarkably sustained and often brilliant. His acute sense of the man, his wide-angled literary insight, and the range and strength of his grasp of Melville's world enable Delbanco to deliver full-scale the strangest of our literary giants. He also has placed himself in the company of Edmund Wilson, Alfred Kazin and Richard Chase as a trustee of our literature who writes as well as he reads. -Ted Solotaroff Delbanco's Melville is a reward, a brilliant and nourishing narrative that reaches beyond literary biography to an exuberant cultural history. His voice is strong-at times personal in his fresh reading of Melville's life and work. -Maureen Howard
Author Bio
Andrew Delbanco is the Julian Clarence Levi Professor in the Humanities and Director of American Studies at Columbia University. He is the author of many books on American Literature and his essays appear regularly in The New York Review of Books, The New York Times Book Review and other journals.