Herman Melville

Herman Melville (1819-1891) sailed on a whaler at twenty-one and deserted in the Marquesas, and the voyage supplied him with material for the rest of his life. Moby-Dick sold badly, was dismissed by reviewers, and was out of print when he died working as a customs inspector in New York; its reputation was rebuilt entirely in the twentieth century. The book mixes narrative with whale anatomy, theology and stagecraft, which is why quoting it is tricky — a great deal of the most striking language belongs to digressions rather than to the plot. Quotes here are given with chapter numbers.