Book Summary and Reviews of Moby-Dick or, The Whale (Penguin Classics) by Herman Melville

Moby-Dick or, The Whale (Penguin Classics) by Herman Melville

Moby-Dick or, The Whale (Penguin Classics)

by Herman Melville

  • Published:
  • Dec 2002, 720 pages
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Book Summary

Herman Melville's masterpiece of obsession and the untamed sea, one of the greatest works of imagination in literary history—featuring an introduction by Andrew Delbanco and notes by Tom Quirk.

Moby-Dick still stands as an indisputable literary classic. It is the story of an eerily compelling madman pursuing an unholy war against a creature as vast and dangerous and unknowable as the sea itself. But more than just a novel of adventure, more than an encyclopedia of whaling lore and legend, Moby-Dick is a haunting, mesmerizing, and important social commentary populated with several of the most unforgettable and enduring characters in literature. 

Written with wonderfully redemptive humor, Moby-Dick is a profound and timeless inquiry into character, faith, and the nature of perception. 

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This information about Moby-Dick or, The Whale (Penguin Classics) was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

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Author Information

Herman Melville

Herman Melville was an American novelist, short story writer, and poet of the American Renaissance period. Among his best-known works are Moby-Dick (1851); Typee (1846), a romanticized account of his experiences in Polynesia; and Billy Budd, Sailor, a posthumously published novella. At the time of his death, Melville was no longer well known to the public, but the 1919 centennial of his birth was the starting point of a Melville revival. Moby-Dick eventually would be considered one of the great American novels.

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