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001			2005040919
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008			050118s2005 nyuab b 001 0beng
010			_a 2005040919
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040			_aDLC _cDLC _dDLC
043			_an-us---
049			_aEY8Z
050	0	0	_aPS2386 _b.D44 2005
082	0	0	_a813/.3 _aB _222
100	1		_aDelbanco, Andrew, _d1952-
245	1	0	_aMelville : _bhis world and work / _cAndrew Delbanco.
250			_a1st ed.
260			_aNew York : _bKnopf, _cc2005.
300			_axxiii, 415 p. : _bill., maps ; _c24 cm.
504			_aIncludes bibliographical references (p. 323-388) and index.
520			_aPublisher description: With Moby-Dick Herman Melville set the standard for the Great American Novel, and with "Bartleby, the Scrivener," Benito Cereno, and Billy Budd he completed perhaps the greatest oeuvre of any of our writers. Now Andrew Delbanco, hailed by Time as "America's best social critic," uses unparalleled historical and critical perspective to give us both a commanding biography and a riveting portrait of the young nation. The grandson of Revolutionary War heroes, Melville was born into a family that in the fledgling republic had lost both money and status. Half New Yorker, half New Englander, and toughened at sea as a young man, he returned home to chronicle the deepest crises of his era, from the increasingly shrill debates over slavery through the bloodbath of the Civil War to the intellectual and spiritual revolution wrought by Darwin. Meanwhile, the New York of his youth, where letters were delivered by horseback messengers, became in his lifetime a city recognizably our own, where the Brooklyn Bridge carried traffic and electric lights lit the streets. Delbanco charts Melville's growth from the bawdy storytelling of Typee-the "labial melody" of his "indulgent captivity" among the Polynesians-through the spiritual preoccupations building up to Moby-Dick and such later works as Pierre, or the Ambiguities and The Confidence-Man, His Masquerade. And he creates a vivid narrative of a life that left little evidence in its wake: Melville's peculiar marriage, the tragic loss of two sons, his powerful friendship with Nathaniel Hawthorne and scores of literary cronies, bouts of feverish writing, relentless financial pressure both in the Berkshires and in New York, declining critical and popular esteem, and ultimately a customs job bedeviled by corruption. Delbanco uncovers autobiographical traces throughout Melville's work, even as he illuminates the stunning achievements of a career that, despite being consigned to obscurity long before its author's death, ultimately shaped our literature. Finally we understand why the recognition of Melville's genius-led by D. H. Lawrence and E. M. Forster, and posthumous by some forty years-still feels triumphant; why he, more than any other American writer, has captured the imaginative, social, and political concerns of successive generations; and why Ahab and the White Whale, after more than a century and a half, have become durably resounding symbols not only here but around the world.
600	1	0	_aMelville, Herman, _d1819-1891.
650		0	_aNovelists, American _y19th century _vBiography.
650		0	_aLiterature and society _zUnited States _xHistory _y19th century.
650		0	_aSocial problems in literature.
948			_au173851
949			_hEY8Z _i33039000751346
596			_a1
903			_a9392
999			_c9392 _d9392