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Below, please find an alphabetized list of critical bibliography which I found very useful while studying Melville. You are strongly encouraged to print this website our and check the availability of books you think you will find of interest to your projects in the library.

NOTE: The bibliography above presents only a fraction of the scholarly output of Melvilleans world-wide. It is therefore strongly recommended that other sources are also considered. Particularly important are the cutting edge Melvillean journals: Leviathan and The Melville Society Extracts

Adamson, Joseph. 1997. Melville, Shame and the Evil Eye. A Psychoanalytic Reading. Albany, N.Y: State University of New York Press.

Anderson, Charles Roberts. 1939 (1966). Melville in the South Seas. New York:Dover

Arvin, Newton. 1962. "Mardi, Redburn, White-Jacket." in: Melville. A Collection of Critical Essays. Richard Chase (ed.). Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc. (pp. 21-38)

Ausband, Stephen C. 1975. "The Whale and the Machine: An Approach to Moby-Dick," American Literature, vol. 47, No. 2 (pp. 197-211)

Bender, Bert. 1984. "Far Tortuga and American Sea Fiction Since Moby-Dick," American Literature, vol. 56, No. 2 (pp. 227-248)

Bergmann, Hans. 1995. God in the Street. New York Writing From the Penny Press to Melville. Philadelphia: Temple University Press

Bercaw, Mary K. 1987. Melville's Sources. Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press

Bickman, Martin (ed). 1985. Approaches to Teaching Melville's Moby Dick. New York: The Modern Language Association of America.

Bickman, Martin. 1988. American Romantic Psychology. Emerson, Poe, Whitman, Dickinson, Melville. Dallas, Texas: Spring Publications Inc.

Brodwin, Stanley. 1971. "Herman Melville's Clarel: An Existential Gospel" in: PMLA: Publications of the Modern Language Association of America, New York. No. 86 (pp. 375-387)

Bryant, John. 1983. "Melville's Comic Debate: Geniality and the Aesthetics of Repose." in: American Literature, vol. 55, No, 2 (pp. 151-170)

Bryant, John. 1987. "Citizens of a World to Come: Melville and the Millenial Cosmopolite" in: American Literature, vol. 59, No 1 (pp. 20-36)

Cannon, Agnes D. 1975. "Melville's Concept of Poet and Poetry" in: Arizona Quarterly, vol. 31, No. 4, Winter 1975

Chase, Richard (ed). 1962. Melville. A Collection of Critical Essays. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc.

Cowley, Malcolm. 1996. New England Writers and Writing. Introduction by Donald W. Faulkner (ed.) Hanover, London: University Press of New England

Cowen, Walker. 1978. "Melville's Marginalia: Hawthorne". Studies in the American Renaissance: 1978. Joel Myerson (ed). Boston: Twayne Publishers, pp. 279-302

Cowen, Walker. 1965. Melville's Marginalia. (11 volumes). A Doctoral Dissertation presented to Harvard University.

DeMott, Robert J; Marovitz, Sanford E (eds). 1975. Artful Thunder. Versions of the Romantic Tradition in American Literature. In Honor of Howard P. Vincent. Kent, Ohio: The Kent State University Press.

Dew, Marjorie. 1966. Herman Melville's Existential View of the Universe: Essays in Phenomenological Interpretation. (MS) A Doctoral Dissertation presented to Kent State University (Supervisor: Howard P. Vincent)

Dew, Marjorie. 1975. "Black-Hearted Melville: 'Geniality' Reconsidered," in: Artful Thunder. Versions of the Romantic Tradition in American Literature. In Honor of Howard P. Vincent. Robert J. DeMott, Sanford E. Marovitz (eds). Kent, Ohio: The Kent State University Press (pp. 177-194)

Elliott, Emory (ed.) 1991. Columbia History of the American Novel. New York, Oxford: Columbia University Press

Elliott, Emory (ed.) 1988. Columbia Literary History of the United States. New York: Columbia University Press

Evans, Lyon. Jr. 1982. "'Too Good to Be True': Subverting Christian Hope in Billy Budd," New England Quarterly, vol. LV, No. 3 (pp. 323-353)

Farnham, James F. 1972. "Captain Vere's Existential Failure," Arizona Quarterly, vol. 28 (pp. 362-370)

Foeller-Pituch, Elzbieta. 1991. "Subversive Allusions: Classical Myth in Melville's The Paradise of Bachelors and the Tartarus of Maids," American Studies, vol. XI, Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego

Garner, Stanton. 1993. The Civil War World of Herman Melville. Lawrence, Kansas: University Press of Kansas

Gidmark, Jill B. 1982. Melville Sea Dictionary: A Glossed Concordance and Analysis of the Sea Langauge in Melville's Nautical Novels. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press

Gilmore, Michael T. (ed). 1977. Twentieth Century Interpretations of Moby Dick. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc.

Glenn, Barbara. 1976. "Melville and the Sublime in Moby-Dick," American Literature, vol. 48, No. 2 (pp. 165-183)

Grabher, Gudrun M. 1989. "Adding to the Myths of Moby-Dick: The Question of Being as Shared by Existential and Oriental Philosophy." Series: AAA-Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik, Band 14, Heft 2. Tubingen: Gunter Narr Verlag (pp. 167-178)

Gretchko, John M.J. 1992. Melvillean Ambiguities. Cleveland: Falk & Bright Publishers, Inc.

Gretchko, John M.J. 1990. Melvillean Loomings: Essays on Moby Dick. Cleveland: Falk & Bright Publishers, Inc.

Hamilton, William. 1985. Melville and the Gods. Chico, CA: Scholars Press

Herbert, Thomas Walter, Jr. 1980. Marquesan Encounters. Melville and the Meaning of Civilization. Cambridge, Mass., London, England: Harvard University Press

Hayes, Kevin J. 1999. Melville's Folk Roots. Kent, Ohio & London: The Kent State University Press

Husni, Khalil. 1981. "Ishmael's leviathanic vision: a study in whiteness," Studia Anglica Posnaniensia, vol. XIII (pp. 177-190)

Ishag, Saada. 1965. "Herman Melville as an Existentialist: An Analysis of Typee, Mardi, Moby-Dick and The Confidence Man," Series: The Emporia State Research Studies, vol. XIV, December, 1965, No. 2, The American Novel: Two Studies. Emporia, Kansas: Kansas State Teachers College (pp. 5-62)

Jaffé, David. 1976. The Stormy Petrel and the Whale. Some Origins of Moby-Dick. Baltimore: Port City Press Inc.

Marovitz, Sanford E. 1975. "Old Man Ahab," in: Artful Thunder. Versions of the Romantic Tradition in American Literature. In Honor of Howard P. Vincent. Robert J. DeMott, Sanford E. Marovitz (eds). Kent, Ohio: The Kent State University Press (pp. 139-161)

Matthiessen, F.O. 1962. American Renaissance. Art and Expression in the Age of Emerson and Whitman. London, Toronto, New York: Oxford University Press.

McCarthy, Paul. 1990. "The Twisted Mind": Madness in Herman Melville's Fiction. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press

Metcalf, Eleanor Melville. 1953. Herman Melville: Cycle and Epicycle. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press

Metcalf, Paul; Spark, Clare. 1991. Enter Isabel. The Herman Melville Correspondence of Clare Spark and Paul Metcalf. Edited and glossed by Paul Metcalf. Albuquerque: Univerity of New Mexico Press

Milder, Robert. 1988. "Herman Melville" in: Columbia Literary History of the United States,  Emory Elliott (ed.). New York: Columbia University Press (pp. 429-447)

Murray, Simon; Hall, Lee. 1993. Bartleby. A Stage Adaptation of Herman Melville's text. (MS)

Nelson, Carl. 1972. "The Ironic Allusive Texture of Lord Jim: Coleridge, Crane, Milton and Melville," Conradiana, vol. IV, No. 2. (pp. 47-59)

Olson, Charles. 1967. Call Me Ishmael. A Study of Melville. London: Jonathan Cape

Ortego,Philip D. 1970. "The Existential Roots of Billy Budd," Connecticut Review 4:1 (pp. 80-87)

Parker, Hershel; Higgins, Brian (eds). 1995. Herman Melville. The Contemporary Reviews. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Parker, Hershel; Hayford, Harrison. 1970. Moby-Dick as Doubloon. Essays and Extracts (1851-1970). New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.

Renker, Elizabeth. 1996. Strike Through the Mask. Herman Melville and the Scene of Writing. Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press

Robillard, Douglas J. 1997. Melville and the Visual Arts. Ionian Form, Venetian Tint. Kent, Ohio, and London, England: The Kent State University Press

Romero, Lora. 1991. "Domesticity and Fiction" in: Columbia History of the American Novel, Emory Elliott (ed). New York, Oxford: Columbia University Press (pp. 110-129)

Rothfork, John. 1972. "The Sailing of Pequod: An Existential Voyage," Arizona Quarterly, vol. 28 (pp. 55-60)

Samson, John. 1984. "The Dynamics of History and Fiction in Melville's Typee," American Quarterly vol. 36, No. 2 (pp. 276-290)

Samson, John. 1984. "Profaning the Sacred: Melville's Omoo and Missionary Narratives," American Literature, vol. 56, No. 4 (pp. 496-509)

Sartre, Jean Paul. 1970. "Moby-Dick," translated by Martin Noble, Adam Internationale Review, vol. 343-345 (pp. 86-88)

Sartre, Jean Paul. 1977. "Herman Melville's Moby-Dick," translated by Richard McCleary in: Twentieth Century Interpretations of Moby Dick, Michael T. Gilmore (ed). Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: .Prentice-Hall, Inc.

Schreiber, Paul. "The Mirror, the Self and the Other: Beyond Reflection in Moby-Dick." MS

Schreiber, Paul. 1995. "Queequeg's Coffin and the Vortex: the Spatiality of Ishmael's narrative in Moby-Dick" in: Proceedings from the Sixth Nordic Conference for English Studies, Tromsø, May 25-28 1995. Eds. Gerd Bjørboude and Gøril Rague. Tromsø: Dept. of English, University of Tromsø.

Sealts, Merton M, Jr. 1988. Melville's Reading. Columbia, South Carolina: University of South Carolina Press

Sedgwick, William Ellery. 1945. Herman Melville: The Tragedy of Mind. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press

Sewall, Richard B. 1990. "Moby-Dick" in: The Vision of Tragedy. Tragic Themes in Literature from The Book of Job to O'Neill and Miller. New York: Paragon House. (pp. 92-105)

Short, Bryan C. 1979. "Form as Vision in Herman Melville's Clarel," American Literature, vol. 50, No. 4 (pp. 553-569)

Schultz, Elizabeth A. 1995. Unpainted to the Last: Moby Dick and Twentieth Century American Art. Lawrence, Kansas; University Press of Kansas

Spark, Clare. 1999. Hunting Captain Ahab: Psychological Warfare and the Melville Revival. (MS).

Sten, Christopher W. 1975. "Vere's Use of the 'Forms': Means and Ends in Billy Budd," American Literature vol. 47, No. 1. (pp. 37-51)

Sten, Christopher (ed.). 1991. Savage Eye: Melville and the Visual Arts. Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press

Sten, Christopher. 1996. The Weaver-God, He Weaves: Melville and the Poetics of the Novel. Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press

Sten, Christopher. 1996. Sounding the Whale: Moby-Dick as Epic Novel. Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press

Subbu, Lalita. 1983. "Two Types of Existential Experience in Moby-Dick" in: Existentialism in American Literature, vol. viii. Chatterji-Ruby (ed.). Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey: Humanities (ss.99-109).

Sweeney, Gerard M. 1975. Melville's Use of Classical Mythology. Amsterdam: Rodopi N.V.

Thompson, Lawrance. 1952. Melville's Quarrel with God. New Jersey: Princeton University Press

Ujházy, Maria. 1982. Herman Melville's World of Whaling. Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó.

Vincent, Howard P. 1980. The Trying Out of Moby-Dick. Kent, Ohio: The Kent State University Press

Weinstein, Cindy. 1993. "The Calm Before the Storm: Laboring through Mardi," American Literature, vol. 65. No. 2 (pp. 239-254)

Wilczyński, Marek. 1998. "The Agency of the Dead Letter in Bartleby," American Studies, vol. XVI (Polish Association for American Studies; Warsaw University American Studies Center) Warsaw: Warsaw University Press (pp. 7-21)

Wilczyński, Marek. 1998. The Phantom and the Abyss. Gothic Fiction in America and Aesthetics of the Sublime (1798-1856). Poznan: Motivex

Zoellner, Robert. 1973. The Salt-Sea Mastodon. A Reading of Moby Dick. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press