Book excerpt: This premium quality large print edition contains the unabridged original classic version of Moby Dick in a large 7.44"x9.69" format, printed on heavyweight 60# bright white paper, with a fully laminated full-color cover featuring an original design. Also included is an original introductory author biography and essay discussing the life and work of Herman Melville and the history and significance of Moby Dick, to provide the modern reader with useful background information, enhancing the enjoyment of this classic novel. Herman Melville is known today primarily for his iconic whaling novel, Moby Dick (1851), the story of the Captain Ahab's hunt for "the great white whale," which appears on most lists of "greatest books ever written" and is considered an essential part of the Western Canon. Ironically, when the novel was published it was a monumental flop and signaled the end of Melvilles's career as a novelist. One theory is that the omission of the epilogue from the first printing left the book open to ridicule as a first-person narrative in which the narrator did not survive to tell the tale. He published several more novels, all without success, and in 1866 he became a New York customs inspector, all but forgotten for the next fifty years. With the modernist movement Moby Dick came to be recognized as a literary classic. What once were considered serious flaws came to be viewed as literary innovations, and Moby Dick went from being criticized as undisciplined and poorly crafted to being hailed as "ahead of its time" and "visionary." For the modern reader, the complex analytical theories behind Moby Dick often interfere with the enjoyment of the novel for its own sake. At face value, Moby Dick is an interesting tale, rich with diverse characters and evocative themes like class and social status, the nature of good and evil, isolation, community, the existence of God, obsession and human perception. A vivid depiction of life aboard ship in the nineteenth century, it may well be the most detailed and accessible existing picture of what was, for a time, the richest industry in the United States. While at times the text seems stilted or antiquated, as could be expected from any work from this era, it is also true that the text attains, at times, a soaring, almost lyric tone. Even the casual reader cannot fail to appreciate the unforgettable characters, compelling storyline and detailed depictions of whales, whalers and whaling, and the obsession-driven quest upon which Ahab drives the ship and crew to their doom. This, without anything more, makes Moby Dick essential reading. Herman Melville (1819-1891) was an author of the American Renaissance, or Romantic, period. Born in New York City as the third child of a successful merchant dealing in French goods, he worked as a schoolteacher before going to sea for the first time in 1839. While serving on a whaler in 1842, he jumped ship and spent a month living among South Pacific islanders. His first novel, "Typee" (1846), was a bestseller, based in part on his experiences in the South Pacific, as was the successful sequel, "Omoo" (1847). The same year Melville, now a successful novelist, married Elizabeth Knapp Shaw. They would have four children between 1849 and 1855. "Mardi" and "Redburn", both published in 1849, met with little success, with "Mardi" criticized as so thematically dense as to be virtually incomprehensible. "White-Jacket" (1850), was based on Melville's brief service in the U.S. Navy. His most influential work during his lifetime, it contained graphic descriptions of flogging that led directly to banning the practice on naval vessels. Moby Dick and several additional failed novels and poetry collections followed. Melville sank into obscurity and died in 1891, about 20 years before Moby Dick began to be recognized as a literary classic.