A Herman Melville Encyclopedia

Front Cover
Bloomsbury Academic, Apr 30, 1995 - Literary Criticism - 536 pages

Herman Melville is one of the most challenging authors of American literature. Known primarily as the author of Moby-Dick, he wrote several other novels, short stories, and poems. With the rise of interest in Melville in the 20th century, critical and biographical studies of Melville continue to be published at an ever-increasing rate. This encyclopedia is a comprehensive guide to Melville's rich and complex literary career.

The volume includes several hundred alphabetically arranged entries for all of Melville's works and characters, and for his family members, friends, and acquaintances. Entries on the most important topics include bibliographies. The encyclopedia is more factual than critical, but scholarship from 1990 and beyond is emphasized throughout. The book also gives special attention to the 19th-century women who influenced Melville, for these women have often been overlooked. A chronology overviews the principal events in Melville's life, and a selected bibliography lists major studies.

About the author (1995)

ROBERT L. GALE is Professor Emeritus of American Literature at the University of Pittsburgh./e His other books include A Henry James Encyclopedia (1989), A Nathaniel Hawthorne Encyclopedia (1991), The Gay Nineties in America: A Cultural Dictionary of the 1890s (1992), and A Cultural Encyclopedia of the 1850s in America (1993), all published by Greenwood Press.

Bibliographic information