ABSTRACT
A masterpiece of antebellum literature, Herman Melville's Moby-Dick; or The Whale is regarded by many literary critics as the greatest of all American novels. Upon his return from London in 1840, Melville worked for a brief time as a teacher. In January 1841, he set sail again, this time heading for the South Seas aboard the whaling ship Acushnet. His experiences in the Pacific during the next two years would inspire not only his earliest writings but also Moby-Dick. In 1851, Melville published Moby-Dick, which he dedicated to Hawthorne. It is about the whaling ship Pequod, commanded by the tenacious Captain Ahab, who leads his crew on a hunt for the great white whale Moby Dick. Melville published his last complete work of long fiction, The Confidence-Man. The novel received better reviews than his other recent publications, although contemporary criticism tended to compare it unfavorably against his early work.
