This new collection offers timely, critical essays specially commissioned to provide a comprehensive overview of Melville's career.

Notes on contributors; Acknowledgments; Chronology of Melville's life; Texts and abbreviations; Introduction Robert S. Levine; 1. Melville and the nonhuman world Geoffrey Sanborn; 2. Melville and oceanic studies Hester Blum; 3. Democracy and Melville's aesthetics Jennifer Greiman; 4. White-Jacket: telling who is - and ain't - a slave Jeannine Marie DeLombard; 5. Reading Moby-Dick Samuel Otter; 6. Pierre, life history, and the obscure Wyn Kelley; 7. 'Bartleby' and the magazine fiction Graham Thompson; 8. Skepticism and The Confidence-Man Maurice S. Lee; 9. Melville the poet in the postbellum world Elizabeth Renker; 10. Judgment in Billy Budd Gregg Crane; 11. Melville and queerness without character Michael Snediker; 12. Melville with pictures Elisa Tamarkin; 13. Melville's planetary compass Timothy Marr; 14. Wound, beast, revision: versions of the Melville meme John Bryant; 15. Cold war allegories and the politics of criticism Christopher Castiglia; Selected bibliography; Index.