Melville, Herman (1819-91), an American Novelist, is widely regarded as one of America's greatest and most influential novelists; known primarily as the author of Moby Dick. He belonged to a group of eminent pre-Civil War writers-American Romantics or members of the American Renaissance-who created a new and vigorous national literature. He is one of the notable examples of an American author whose work went largely unrecognized in his own time and died in obscurity. American novelist, a major literary figure whose exploration of psychological and metaphysical themes foreshadowed 20th-century literary concerns but whose