<b>Moby-Dick or, The Whale by Herman Melville</b>&nbsp;is an 1851 novel by American writer&nbsp;Herman Melville. The book is the sailor&nbsp;Ishmael&#39;s narrative of the obsessive quest of&nbsp;Ahab, captain of the&nbsp;whaling ship&nbsp;<i>Pequod</i>, for revenge against&nbsp;Moby Dick, the giant white&nbsp;sperm whale&nbsp;that on the ship&#39;s previous voyage bit off Ahab&#39;s leg at the knee.<br /><br />A contribution to the literature of the&nbsp;American Renaissance,&nbsp;<i>Moby-Dick</i>&nbsp;was published to mixed reviews, was a commercial failure, and was out of print at the time of the author&#39;s death in 1891. Its reputation as a &quot;Great American Novel&quot; was established only in the 20th century, after the 1919 centennial of its author&#39;s birth.&nbsp;William Faulkner&nbsp;said he wished he had written the book himself, and&nbsp;D. H. Lawrence&nbsp;called it &quot;one of the strangest and most wonderful books in the world&quot; and &quot;the greatest book of the sea ever written&quot;. Its&nbsp;opening sentence, &quot;Call me Ishmael&quot;, is among world literature&#39;s most famous.<br /><br />Melville began writing&nbsp;<i>Moby-Dick</i>&nbsp;in February 1850 and finished 18 months later, a year after he had anticipated. Melville drew on his experience as a common sailor from 1841 to 1844, including several years on whalers, and on wide reading in whaling literature. The white whale is modeled on a notoriously hard-to-catch albino whale&nbsp;Mocha Dick, and the book&#39;s ending is based on the sinking of the whaleship&nbsp;<i>Essex</i>&nbsp;in 1820.<br /><br />The detailed and realistic descriptions of&nbsp;whale hunting&nbsp;and of extracting whale oil, as well as life aboard ship among a culturally diverse crew, are mixed with exploration of&nbsp;class&nbsp;and&nbsp;social status, good and evil, and the&nbsp;existence of God. The book&#39;s literary influences include&nbsp;Shakespeare&nbsp;and the&nbsp;Bible. In addition to&nbsp;narrative&nbsp;prose, Melville uses styles and&nbsp;literary devices&nbsp;ranging from songs, poetry, and catalogs to Shakespearean&nbsp;stage directions,&nbsp;soliloquies, and&nbsp;asides.<br /><br />In August 1850, with the manuscript perhaps half finished, he met&nbsp;Nathaniel Hawthorne&nbsp;and was deeply impressed by his&nbsp;<i>Mosses from an Old Manse</i>, which he&nbsp;compared to Shakespeare&nbsp;in its cosmic ambitions. This encounter may have inspired him to revise and deepen&nbsp;<i>Moby-Dick</i>, which is dedicated to Hawthorne, &quot;in token of my admiration for his genius&quot;.