Herman Melville was born in New York in 1819. His father died in debt when he was twelve, and at twenty-one he sailed on the whaler Acushnet to the South Seas. He deserted ship in the Marquesas Islands, lived among the islanders, and came home to write about it in Typee, a bestseller.

Moby-Dick (1851) sold poorly and puzzled its readers. Melville spent nineteen years as a customs inspector on the New York docks and died in 1891 almost forgotten. Only in the 1920s was Moby-Dick rediscovered, and called the great American novel.