Herman Melville , (1819-1891), considered one of the great American writers and a major figure in world literature, is acknowledged for adding a new depth to American fiction.

Stylistically, Melville's prose is taut and precise. He engages in minute descriptive detail utilizing his concept of literature as "the great Art of Telling the Truth", masterfully using irony, grim humor and symbolism. His later novels were excessively probing of psychological and spiritual matters. The allegorical implications evident in his romances explore themes of justice and innocence, man's cruelty and blind ambition, man's search for and defiance of God.

The appearance of a new book by Herman Melville was esteemed a literary event throughout the English-speaking world; to British reviews of the time he was the most interesting of American authors and those who adhered to the British rule of not reading American books made Melville one of the few exceptions and considered him an unquestionable literary force.

Moby-Dick, reviewed in the Harper's New Monthly Magazine:

" . . . Beneath the whole story, the subtle, imaginative reader may perhaps find a pregnant allegory, intended to illustrate the mystery of human life. Certain it is that the rapid, pointed hints which are often thrown out, with the keenness and velocity of a harpoon, penetrate deep into the heart of things, showing that the genius of the author for moral analysis is scarcely surpassed by his wizard power of description."

And in the 1884 issue of the London Contemporary Review:

" 'Moby Dick' is not a sea-story -- one could not read it as such -- it is a medley of noble impassioned thoughts born of the deep, pervaded by a grotesque human interest, . . . It is . . . madly fantastic in places, full of extraordinary thoughts, yet gloriously coherent . . ."

Alone among his nineteenth-century peers in his experience as sailor and world traveler, he wrote five books drawing on these experiences. Typee (1846) was based on Melville’s adventures after jumping ship in the Marquesas Islands; its sequel was Omoo (1847). Mardi (1849) was a South Seas fantasy. Redburn (1849) was a semi-autobiographical account of Melville’s days in the merchant marine, and White-Jacket (1849) told the tale of life on a U.S. man-of-war.

Melville’s most famous works include: TYPEE (1846), OMOO (1847), MOBY-DICK (1851), and THE CONFIDENCE MAN (1857) and have secured him a permanent place in American Literature.