Guide to further readingExemplary editionsFoster, Elizabeth S. (ed.), The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade, New York: Hendricks House, 1954. Published soon after The Confidence-Man revival, Foster's meticulous edition illuminates some of the novel's complexities. Her lengthy introduction situates the book within its cultural milieu; her extensive notes explain the novel's arcane historical and contemporary references.
Hayford, Harrison, and Walter, Blair (eds.), Omoo: A Narrative of Adventures in the South Seas, New York: Hendricks House, 1969. Though publication of this edition was delayed for several years, it has withstood the test of time. Hayford's unsurpassed annotations reveal the richness of images and ideas that fill Omoo, Melville's most undervalued work.
Hayford, Harrison, and Merton, M.Sealts, Jr (eds.), Billy Budd, Sailor (An Inside Narrative): Reading Text and Genetic Text, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962. This, the standard edition of Melville's last novel, presents both the reading text of Billy Budd and the genetic text, which transcribes Melville's manuscript, identifying the different stages and substages of composition.
Hayford, Harrison G.Thomas, Tanselle, and Hershel, Parker (eds.), The Writings of Herman Melville, 13 vols. to date, Evanston and Chicago: Northwestern University Press and The Newberry Library, 1968– (vols. 1–10, 12, 14–15). Each volume in this edition contains a detailed historical essay placing the work in its biographical, historical, and critical contexts. The editorial policy for the early volumes omitted explanatory notes, but during its lengthy publication, the policy has changed. Some of the more recent volumes in this collected edition – Journals, Clarel – include excellent annotations.
Mansfield, Luther S., and Howard, P. Vincent (eds.), Moby-Dick: or, The Whale, New York: Hendricks House, 1952. The splendidly annotated Mansfield-Vincent text of Moby-Dick is essential for understanding the literary, historical, and cultural references that contribute so much to the work's richness.
Parker, Hershel (ed.), and illus, Maurice Sendak.), Pierre: or, The Ambiguities, New York: HarperCollins, 1995. This edition approximates the text of Pierre as it stood once Melville first completed the work in late 1851, that is, before the negative reviews of Moby-Dick appeared and Melville expanded his text and turned Pierre Glendinning into an author. Sendak's provocative illustrations constitute a challenging, yet sensitive interpretation of the novel in themselves.
Sanborn, Geoffrey (ed.), Typee: Complete Text with Introduction, Historical Contexts, Critical Essays, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2004. This edition not only presents a reading text of Typee, it also includes numerous supporting documents. The accounts from contemporary explorers of the South Seas treat many of the same themes as Melville and thus serve as vital touchstones for Typee.
BiographyGarner, Stanton, The Civil War World of Herman Melville, Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1993. The single best treatment of Battle-Pieces, this work presents a detailed history of each of the events that inspired Melville's collection of Civil War verse. Essentially a critical biography of Melville during the Civil War years, this work has one drawback: a tendency to devote too much space to Melville's extended family, a tendency that plagues even the best Melville biographies.
Heflin, Wilson L., Herman Melville's Whaling Years, Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2004. A collection of articles Heflin published throughout his career, this volume offers much important information for reassessing Melville's life as a sailor before he turned author.
Leyda, Jay, The Melville Log: A Documentary Life of Herman Melville, 1819–1891, 1951; reprinted, New York: Gordian Press, 1969. A carefully-crafted compilation of source materials excerpted from contemporary documents – journals, letters, newspaper accounts, reviews – and assembled according to Sergei Eisenstein's principles of montage, The Melville Log is the single most important work of Melville scholarship ever created.
Parker, Hershel, Herman Melville: A Biography, 2 vols., Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996–2002. Two-thousand pages in length, Parker's is the most thorough biography of Melville available and contains much new information. More than merely a literary biography of an individual author, this work constitutes a grand saga of the Melville family.
Reference worksBercaw, Mary K.Melville's Sources, Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1987. The second part of this innovative bibliography lists scholarly books and articles identifying literary sources that influenced Melville. Drawing its information from these scholarly works, the first part offers a bibliography of sources. Bercaw's work is essential for understanding the literary contexts of Melville's writings.
Cowen, Walker, Melville's Marginalia, 2 vols., New York: Garland, 1987. Cowen transcribes the holograph inscriptions – both verbal and non-verbal – from surviving copies of books formerly in Melville's possession. Melville's Marginalia offers an excellent way to see how Melville read what he read.
Hayes, Kevin J., and Hershel, Parker, Checklist of Melville Reviews, Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1991. Designed as a research tool, this checklist is slim enough to be tucked into a briefcase and toted to the library for ready reference while scanning through old newspapers on microfilm. While containing the fullest listing of contemporary reviews available, this checklist is intended as a work in progress. Many more reviews await discovery.
Higgins, Brian, Herman Melville, An Annotated Bibliography, Boston: G. K. Hall, 1979. Higgins lists articles and books about Melville from 1846, the year Typee appeared, to 1930. His annotations show his keen understanding of Melville criticism. Taken together, these entries offer an overview of Melville's contemporary reception, subsequent neglect, and ultimate revival.
Higgins, Brian, Herman Melville: A Reference Guide, 1931–1960, Boston: G. K. Hall, 1987. Picking up where Higgins's earlier bibliography left off, this work traces Melville scholarship and criticism from the period of the 1930s and 1940s – the golden age of literary scholarship – through the heyday of the New Criticism to the beginnings of post-structural criticism.
Sealts, Merton M. Jr, Melville's Reading: Revised and Enlarged Edition, Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1988. Sealts's thorough introduction shows how important books were to Melville's life. The bulk of this work presents a catalogue of books Melville owned or read. Brief annotations to the individual bibliographic entries describe the evidence underlying Sealts's identifications.
Retrospective essay collectionsHayes, Kevin (ed.), The Critical Response to Herman Melville's Moby-Dick, Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1994. Subdivided into three sections, this collection surveys the critical reception of Moby-Dick from the contemporary response through the Melville revival to modern academic attention. Largely filled with reprinted articles, this collection includes two original essays, the editor's “Moby-Dick and the Aesthetics of Response” and Mark Niemeyer's “Moby-Dick and the Spirit of Revolution.”
Higgins, Brian, and Hershel, Parker (eds.), Critical Essays on Herman Melville's Moby-Dick, New York: G. K. Hall, 1992. This beefy work includes a good selection of contemporary reviews, critical articles, essays treating the literary influences on and major themes of Moby-Dick, and original essays by John Wenke, David S. Reynolds, and Hershel Parker.
Higgins, Brian, and Hershel, Parker (eds.), Herman Melville: The Contemporary Reviews, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995. The fullest collection of Melville reviews available, this invaluable collection contains a wealth of useful information for understanding Melville's contemporary reception. The only drawback – a poor index – can be mitigated by consulting the electronic edition, which is available online.
Parker, Hershel and Harrison, Hayford (eds.), Moby-Dick as Doubloon: Essays and Extracts (1851–1970), New York: W. W. Norton, 1970. Since most of the included works are extracts rather than complete essays, this collection makes for a fast-paced survey of some of the most insightful comments by some of the best writers who have commented on Melville's masterwork.
Critical studiesArvin, Newton, Herman Melville, 1950; reprinted, New York: Grove, 2002. Often mislabeled a biography, Arvin's critical study contains many incisive comments on Melville's life and work. Paradoxically, Arvin's greatest strength is also his greatest weakness. He interprets Melville's life as his own. Sometimes Arvin is on target; other times he lets his own personal orientation color his understanding of Melville's life.
Bryant, John, Melville and Repose: The Rhetoric of Humor in the American Renaissance, New York: Oxford University Press, 1993. Bryant initially situates Melville within the comic tradition in American literature, examining Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, and Thomas Bangs Thorpe as Melville's literary forebears. After providing this foundation, Bryant discusses Melville's use of humor in Typee, Moby-Dick, and The Confidence-Man at length.
Bryant, John, and Robert, Milder (eds.), Melville's Evermoving Dawn: Centennial Essays, Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1997. This eclectic collection contains essays by some of the most important Melville scholars available: Walter Bezanson, H. Bruce Franklin, Stanton Garner, Hershel Parker, Merton Sealts, John Seelye, and many others. The highlight of the collection is a transcript of a panel discussion on Melville biography.
Grey, Robin (ed.), Melville and Milton: An Edition and Analysis of Melville's Annotations on Milton, Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 2004. In addition to transcribing Melville's marginalia from his copy of Milton, Grey includes critical essays by several contributors analyzing Milton's influence on Battle-Pieces, Clarel, and Moby-Dick.
Hayes, Kevin J., Melville's Folk Roots, Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1999. The first part of this work contains five chapters, each devoted to a different folk genre: folk songs, legends, proverbs, superstitions, and tall tales. The chapters that form the second part examine individual works that make significant use of folklore: Clarel, Moby-Dick, and Redburn.
Hayford, Harrison, Melville's Prisoners, Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2003. A compilation of essays published throughout Hayford's career, this volume is filled with valuable insights into Melville's life and writings. Especially important are Hayford's discussions of Melville's compositional process.
James, C. L. R., Mariners, Renegades, and Castaways: The Story of Herman Melville and the World We Live In, 1953; reprinted, Hanover: University Press of New England, 2001. The fullest and finest reading of Melville from a Marxist point of view, Mariners, Renegades, and Castaways identifies Melville's affinity to twentieth-century sociopolitical developments and provides detailed critical interpretations of Moby-Dick and Pierre.
Olson, Charles, Collected Prose, Donald, Allen and Benjamin, Friedlander, eds., Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997. Call Me Ishmael, Olson's classic study of Melville's writing, remains an intriguing work, even if it is a little fast and loose in the fact department. This collection also includes three review-essays that discuss new editions and critical studies of Melville.
Parker, Hershel, Reading Billy Budd, Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1990. This, the fullest critical treatment of Billy Budd, puts the work in the context of Melville's late writings, examines its textual history, provides a detailed chapter-by-chapter analysis, and identifies the problematical nature of the text.
Robillard, Douglas, Melville and the Visual Arts: Ionian Form, Venetian Tint, Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1997. In his early chapters, Robillard describes what Melville knew about art from his reading, his gallery visits, and his collection of engravings. Individual chapters analyze the place of art in Clarel, Moby-Dick, Pierre, and Redburn.
Wenke, John P., Melville's Muse: Literary Creation and the Forms of Philosophical Fiction, Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1995. Analyzing the place of philosophy in Melville's fiction, Wenke begins with an extensive treatment of Mardi, offers multiple perspectives on Moby-Dick, and closes with discussions of Pierre and The Confidence-Man.
