Herman Melville

Herman Melville: The Contemporary Reviews reprints virtually all the known contemporary reviews of Herman Melville's writings from the 1840s until his death in 1891. Many of his reviews are reprinted from hard-to-locate contemporary newspapers and periodicals. These materials document the response of the reviewers to specific worlds and share the course of Melville's nineteenth century reputation as travel writer, romancer, short-story writer, and poet.