Herman Melville

Herman Melville was an American novelist, short story writer and poet, born in Manhattan on 1 August 1819. His family faced financial hardship after his father's death, and as a young man he worked as a clerk, a teacher and then a sailor. Voyages on merchant and whaling ships, including time in the South Pacific, gave him the material for his early books, which were popular adventure narratives.

His later work grew more ambitious and strange, and readers of his own day often did not follow him. Moby-Dick, now regarded as one of the great American novels, sold poorly at first. Melville turned to short fiction and poetry, and later worked for years as a customs inspector in New York. He died on 28 September 1891. His reputation revived in the twentieth century, and he is now admired for his daring style, his sea stories and his questions about power, faith, race and human nature.