A Historical Guide to Herman Melville

Edited by Giles Gunn

Historical Guides to American Authors

This brilliant, original collection of essays on Melville's life and writing makes the case for his centrality both to nineteenth-century writing in America and also to America's understanding of itself. No American literary artist has ever known his fellow citizens in greater depth.

A Historical Guide to Herman Melville

Edited by Giles Gunn

Historical Guides to American Authors

Description

This collection gathers together original essays dealing with Melville's relations with his historical era, with class, with the marketplace, with ethnic otherness, and with religion. These essays are framed by a new, short biography by Robert Milder, an introduction by Giles Gunn, an illustrated chronology, and a bibliographical essay. Taken together, these pieces afford a fresh and searching set of perspectives on Melville's connections both with his own age and also with our own. This book makes the case, as does no other collection of criticism of its size, for Melville's commanding centrality to nineteenth-century American writing.

A Historical Guide to Herman Melville

Edited by Giles Gunn

Historical Guides to American Authors

Introduction, Giles Gunn
Melville in His Time
1. Herman Melville, 1819-1891: A Brief Biography, Robert Milder
2. Romantic Answers, Victorian Questions: Cultural Possibilities for Melville at Mid-Century, Leon Chai
3. Melville and Class, Myra Jehlen
4. Melville and the Marketplace, Sheila Post
5. Without the Pale: Melville and Ethnic Cosmopolitanism, Timothy Marr
6. "Wandering To-and-Fro": Melville and Religion, Emory Elliott
Illustrated Chronology
Bibliographical Essay, Giles Gunn