Herman Melville

Herman Melville was an American writer of the American Renaissance period, among whose best-known works are Moby-Dick (1851), Typee (1846), a romanticized account of his experiences in Polynesia, and the posthumously published novella Billy Budd, Sailor. Born in New York City, he went to sea in 1839 and later served on the whaler Acushnet, jumping ship in the Marquesas Islands, experiences that supplied the material for Typee and its sequel Omoo; though Melville was little known to the public at his death, the centennial of his birth in 1919 sparked a revival that eventually established Moby-Dick as one of the Great American Novels. In his later years he turned to poetry, publishing Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War (1866) on the American Civil War, before dying of cardiovascular disease in 1891.