The lives of some of our most gifted geniuses -- Mozart, Shelley, Keats -- were blighted by the tragedy of dying young. But it was tragedy of another kind that overtook the extraordinary novelist and ...

Aug. 1 is Herman Melville’s 200th birthday, an occasion likely to spark less excitement than we “Moby-Dick” fans might want, but perhaps plenty for those who find the book impenetrable (assuming ...

This original, learned, and droll novel is as much about biography and biographers as it is about marriage, literature during a pandemic, the hazards and rewards of research — and Herman Melville. The ...

Hershel Parker, a longtime Melville scholar, is an archival- research fanatic. Working with Jay Leyda on several new editions of The Melville Log (a long documentary compendium of Melville’s life) in ...

Not until the early 20th century was Herman Melville's novel Moby Dick first recognized as a literary masterpiece and touted as a cornerstone of modern American literature. Etching of Joseph O.

In the first article of this series, I described how Herman Melville was born into a mercantile family which fell on hard times, his adventures as a seaman and harpooner in the Pacific as a young man, ...

In this spellbinding biography, literary historian Greenblatt (The Swerve) recreates the short life of English playwright and poet Christopher Marlowe, arguing that Marlowe’s Continue reading » The ...

Did Melville’s attraction to a neighbor’s wife—or to Nathaniel Hawthorne—spur the writing of "Moby-Dick"? A biography and a novel, respectively, propose those scenarios. WSJ's Brenda Cronin joins ...

PITTSFIELD — What do a mahogany serpentine-front desk, a tin breadbox and a silver custom inspector's badge have to do with Herman Melville? They're all items that, at one time, belonged to the ...