Moby Dick, or The Whale

'Moby Dick, or The Whale,' the sixth of Herman Melville's novels, has been called 'perhaps the most powerful rendering in prose literature of the eternal conflict of man and fate.' Yet during the author's lifetime it failed to capture the interest of readers who had been entranced by his more direct accounts of adventure such as 'Typee' 'Omoo' and 'Mardi', all romances of the South Seas. Melville's fiction was consistently based on his actual experiences in the course of ocean voyages, the first of which he had undertaken at the age of twenty.