Moby Dick

Moby-Dick is an 1851 novel by Herman Melville. The story tells the adventures of the wandering sailor Ishmael and his voyage on the whaling ship Pequod, commanded by Captain Ahab. Ishmael soon learns that Ahab seeks one specific whale, Moby-Dick, a white whale of tremendous size and ferocity. Comparatively few whaling ships know of Moby-Dick, and fewer yet have encountered him. In a previous encounter, the whale destroyed Ahab's boat and bit off his leg. Ahab intends to exact revenge.
The novel was a commercial failure and out of print at the time of the author's death in 1891, but during the 20th century its reputation as a Great American Novel was established. The product of a year and a half of writing, the book draws on Melville's experience at sea, on his reading in whaling literature, and on literary inspirations such as Shakespeare and the Bible. The detailed and realistic descriptions of whale hunting and of extracting whale oil, as well as life aboard ship among a culturally diverse crew, are mixed with exploration of class and social status, good and evil, and the existence of God. In addition to narrative prose, Melville uses styles and literary devices ranging from songs, poetry, and catalogs to Shakespearean stage directions, soliloquies, and asides.
While everyone else loved his stories, Melville himself grew tired of the same old stuff. He was inspired by Nathaniel Hawthorne's 'The Scarlet Letter' and began writing his famous novel, 'Moby Dick'. Sadly, people weren't too interested, and when he died in 1891 at the age of 72, no one really knew who he was. As Ralph Waldo Emerson would say, 'To be great is to be misunderstood.'
And thankfully, a few decades after Herman Melville's death, people began to revisit his work and decided that he had been quite misunderstood during his lifetime. Ever since, Melville has been known as one of the great writers of his time, and maybe even of all time.