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by: Andrew Delbanco
List Price: $16.00Amazon.com's Price: $10.88 You Save: $5.12 (32%)Prices subject to change.
Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 810
EAN: 9780375702976
ISBN: 0375702970
Label: Vintage
Manufacturer: Vintage
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 448
Publication Date: September 12, 2006
Publisher: Vintage
Release Date: September 12, 2006
Sales Rank: 215814
Studio: Vintage
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Editorial Review:
Product Description:
If Dickens was nineteenth-century London personified, Herman Melville was the quintessential American. With a historian’s perspective and a critic’s insight, award-winning author Andrew Delbanco marvelously demonstrates that Melville was very much a man of his era and that he recorded — in his books, letters, and marginalia; and in conversations with friends like Nathaniel Hawthorne and with his literary cronies in Manhattan — an incomparable chapter of American history. From the bawdy storytelling of Typee to the spiritual preoccupations building up to and beyond Moby Dick, Delbanco brilliantly illuminates Melville’s life and work, and his crucial role as a man of American letters.
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Andrew Delbanco' short biography of Herman Melville is a good introduction to the novelist
Herman Melville (1819-1891) was a strange chap. In this new biography by Professor Andrew Delbanco we go in search of the Great White Dead Male Author of American literature. Delbanco relates the known facts of the New York's author's sad life but is best at exegeting his great works in understandable language for the student or Melvillian fan.
Melville's father Allen was a failed businessman and he was dominated by his mother Marie. The family suffered genteel poverty in upstate New ... Read More
Rating:  - Whale of a Book
Is there anything quite like a great biography? A great novel, you say, and I'd agree, but where are they? Meanwhile, we have these marvelous pieces of writing: Ellmann's biography of Joyce, Edel's biography of James, Holroyd on Shaw. This is not a multi-volumed immortal masterpiece but it has all of the characteristics of such a work, save exhaustiveness. This is an introduction, really, more than a complete life, but it serves its purpose as well as can be imagined. The prose style is inviting and ... Read More
Rating: - Delbanco skillfully brings the world of Melville to life
This biography of Melville is as balanced, accessible, and thoroughly entertaining as a biography of a literary figure can get while still being considered "serious." Delbanco has a great skills as a writer himself, skillfully juggling the story of Melville's life, critical discussions of his writing, and finally the social and historical context of the works.
The discussions of the books are excellent, particularly Delbanco's readings of the novels Moby Dick, Typee, and Pierre. But where ... Read More
Rating: - A New Study of Herman Melville
Herman Melville (1819 -- 1893) is one of the writers I have returned to again and again over the course of years. Thus, I was gratified to receive this new book by Andrew Delbanco, "Melville: His Life and Work" (2005) as a gift and to have the opportunity to read it, think again about Melville, and share my thoughts on this site with other readers. Delbanco is Levi Professor in the Humanities and Director of American Studies at Columbia University. He has published widely on American literature, including ... Read More
Rating:  - Hershel Parker's rehash
All of the comments about this book are true with the exception that the majority of the biographical findings stem from Hershel Parker's groundbreaking, momentuous two-volume work that maintains itself as THE definitive biography of Melville. Credit Mr. Parker for The Isle of the Cross details, not Delbanco who was one of Parker's most vocal critics and once disputed the biographer's findings on The Isle of the Cross. However, if you do not want to wade through Parker's immense work, then go for this.
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