Bartleby, The Scrivener

Herman Melville (1819-1891) was a prominent American novelist in the nineteenth century. He was one of eight children born into a military family with strong ties to the Revolutionary War. As a young man, he held odd jobs including a seaman, which would inspire his greatest literary works. Melville was an avid reader whose first story Typee: A Peep at Polynesian Life (1846) was loosely based on his own experiences. Yet, it was Moby Dick, published in 1851, that is considered his great American masterpiece.