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Title details for Melville in Love by Michael Shelden - Available

Melville in Love

by Michael Shelden
Sean Pratt
Audiobook
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Herman Melville's epic novel, Moby-Dick, was a spectacular failure when it was published in 1851, effectively ending its author's rise to literary fame. Because he was neglected by academics for so long, and because he made little effort to preserve his legacy, we know very little about Melville, and even less about what he called his "wicked book." Scholars still puzzle over what drove Melville to invent Captain Ahab's mad pursuit of the great white whale. In Melville in Love Michael Shelden sheds light on this literary mystery to tell a story of Melville's passionate and clandestine affair with a married woman named Sarah Morewood, whose libertine impulses encouraged and sustained Melville's own. In his research, Shelden discovered documents suggesting that, in their shared resistance to the "iron rule" of social conformity, Sarah and Melville had forged an illicit and enduring romantic and intellectual bond. Emboldened by the thrill of courting Sarah in secret, the pleasure of falling in love, and the excitement of spending time with literary luminaries, Melville found the courage to take the leap from light works of adventure to the hugely brilliant, utterly subversive Moby-Dick.
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Publisher: Tantor Media, Inc. Edition: Unabridged

OverDrive Listen audiobook

  • ISBN: 9781515927853
  • File size: 196309 KB
  • Release date: June 15, 2016
  • Duration: 06:48:58

MP3 audiobook

  • ISBN: 9781515927853
  • File size: 196620 KB
  • Release date: June 15, 2016
  • Duration: 06:48:56
  • Number of parts: 6
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Formats

OverDrive Listen audiobook
MP3 audiobook

subjects

Biography & Autobiography History Nonfiction

Languages

English

Herman Melville's epic novel, Moby-Dick, was a spectacular failure when it was published in 1851, effectively ending its author's rise to literary fame. Because he was neglected by academics for so long, and because he made little effort to preserve his legacy, we know very little about Melville, and even less about what he called his "wicked book." Scholars still puzzle over what drove Melville to invent Captain Ahab's mad pursuit of the great white whale. In Melville in Love Michael Shelden sheds light on this literary mystery to tell a story of Melville's passionate and clandestine affair with a married woman named Sarah Morewood, whose libertine impulses encouraged and sustained Melville's own. In his research, Shelden discovered documents suggesting that, in their shared resistance to the "iron rule" of social conformity, Sarah and Melville had forged an illicit and enduring romantic and intellectual bond. Emboldened by the thrill of courting Sarah in secret, the pleasure of falling in love, and the excitement of spending time with literary luminaries, Melville found the courage to take the leap from light works of adventure to the hugely brilliant, utterly subversive Moby-Dick.
Expand title description text
Biography & Autobiography History Nonfiction