“Drink Ye Harpooners! Death to Moby Dick!”

With that fateful cry, Captain Ahab drags his crew to fulfill his insane obsession: the destruction of the great White Whale known as Moby Dick, the embodiment of pure evil.

Brimming with powerful imagery and symbolism, its intensity sustained by roguish irony and moments of exquisite beauty, Melville's masterpiece is both a great American epic and one of the most profoundly imaginative creations in literary history. It has thrilled readers for over one hundred years.

HERMAN MELVILLE (1819–1891) was an American novelist, short story writer, essayist, poet, sailor, and customs inspector. The author of numerous classic novels, essays, and short stories, he is perhaps best known for Moby Dick, Typee, The Confidence Man, Redburn, Clarel, Bartleby, the Scrivener, and Billy Budd. He is considered a literary colossus, and a central figure in the development of the modern novel.