UMass Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press

A Biography

Book Jacket: "Melville" by L. Robertson-Lorant

Laurie Robertson-Lorant

The vivid, absorbing story of one of America’s greatest writers

Drawing on more than five hundred newly discovered letters, this book immerses the reader in the often turbulent world of Herman Melville, from his childhood to his seafaring days, to his often frustrating career as a writer. With energetic prose and an unerring eye for psychological nuance, Laurie Robertson-Lorant explores the forces that shaped the man: the women and children in his life, his enigmatic relationship with Nathaniel Hawthorne, the psychosexual tensions that informed his art, his struggles against debt, his disappointment about failing to win a popular audience for his more serious work, and the alcoholism and violence that plagued his family. Melville is a brilliant account of one of America's preeminent literary geniuses.

"Robertson-Lorant is quite simply a marvelous writer in her own right who excels at all the arts readers look for in a successful biography: narrating a compelling story, portraying complex and believable characters, exploring human relationships, illuminating the biographee's psychology, and capturing the immediacy of social settings and historical events....This is a biography that lives, breathes, and speaks—a biography that will endure. It is altogether a magnificent achievement."

New England Quarterly
"With impressive skill, abundant detail and sharp attentiveness to the grandeur of Melville's poetry and prose at their best, [Robertson-Lorant] tells the story of his productive yet struggle-filled career....[The book] is finely executed and enlightening, both as a biography of one of our foremost authors and as an evocative history of 19th-century American life."

Boston Globe
"Melville biography comes of age with the publication of Laurie Robertson-Lorant's splendid new work."

Melville Society Extracts
"This is the best full-length biography....Highly recommended."

Library Journal

Laurie Robertson-Lorant holds the Sidney F. Tyler Chair in Creative Writing at St. Mark's School in Southborough, Massachusetts.

Biography / American Literature
736 pp., 30 illustrations
LC 98-4899
$27.95s paper, ISBN 1-55849-145-7
1998

Not for sale in the British Commonwealth except Canada

about placing orders on our secure server
ADD TO CART | VIEW CART | CHECKOUT