{"product_id":"herman-melville-hershel-parker-9780801881862","title":"Herman Melville: A Biography","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eThe definitive life of the great American writer concludes, chronicling Melville's achievement and courage after the critical and commercial failure of \u003ci\u003eMoby-Dick\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWinner of the Association of American Publishers Professional and Scholarly Publishing Award for Biography and AutobiographySelected by \u003ci\u003eChoice\u003c\/i\u003e Magazine as an Outstanding Academic Title for 2003\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe first volume of Hershel Parker's definitive biography of Herman Melville--a finalist for the 1997 Pulitzer Prize--closed on a mid-November day in 1851. In the dining room of the Little Red Inn in Lenox, Massachusetts, Melville had just presented an inscribed copy of his new novel, \u003ci\u003eMoby-Dick\u003c\/i\u003e, to his intimate friend, Nathaniel Hawthorne, the man to whom the work was dedicated. \"Take it all in all,\" Parker concluded, \"this was the happiest day of Melville's life.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eHerman Melville: A Biography, Volume 2, 1851-1891\u003c\/i\u003e chronicles Melville's life in rich detail, from this ecstatic moment to his death, in obscurity, forty years later. Parker describes the malignity of reviewers and sheer bad luck that doomed \u003ci\u003eMoby-Dick\u003c\/i\u003e to failure (and its author to prolonged indebtedness), the savage reviews he received for his next book \u003ci\u003ePierre\u003c\/i\u003e, and his inability to have the novel \u003ci\u003eThe Isle of the Cross\u003c\/i\u003e--now lost--published at all. Melville turned to magazine fiction, writing the now-classic \"Bartleby\" and \"Benito Cereno,\" and produced a final novel, \u003ci\u003eThe Confidence Man\u003c\/i\u003e, a mordant satire of American optimism. Over his last three decades, while working as a customs inspector in Manhattan, Melville painstakingly remade himself as a poet, crafting the centennial epic \u003ci\u003eClarel\u003c\/i\u003e, in which he sorted out his complex feelings for Hawthorne, and the masterful story \"Billy Budd,\" originally written as a prose headnote to an unfinished poem.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThrough prodigious archival research into hundreds of family letters and diary entries, newly discovered newspaper articles, and marginalia from books that Melville owned, Parker vividly recreates the last four decades of Melville's life, episode after episode unknown to previous biographers. The concluding volume of \u003ci\u003eHerman Melville: A Biography\u003c\/i\u003e confirms Hershel Parker's position as the world's leading Melville scholar, demonstrating his unrivaled biographical, literary, and historical imagination and providing a rich new portrait of a great--and profoundly American--artist.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor:\u003c\/b\u003e Hershel Parker\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-10:\u003c\/b\u003e 0801881862\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-13:\u003c\/b\u003e 9780801881862\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e Johns Hopkins University Press\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eLanguage:\u003c\/b\u003e English\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 08\/19\/2005\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 1056\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eFormat:\u003c\/b\u003e Paperback\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 2.95lbs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSize:\u003c\/b\u003e 8.82h x 6.42w x 2.04d\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eReview Citation(s): \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/i\u003e 10\/16\/2005 pg. 28","brand":"Hershel Parker","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":44054508962047,"sku":"9780801881862","price":46.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0662\/2982\/9887\/files\/img_3c9f35aa-16fe-4657-9e0b-9484bb66cb7d.jpg?v=1685030360","url":"https:\/\/www.whiterainbookhouse.com\/products\/herman-melville-hershel-parker-9780801881862","provider":"WR Book House","version":"1.0","type":"link"}