Includes bibliographical references (pages 251-271).
Summary:
"In Melville in Love Pulitzer Prize-finalist Michael Shelden sheds light on this literary mystery to tell a story of Melvilles passionate, obsessive, and clandestine affair with a married woman named Sarah Morewood, whose libertine impulses encouraged and sustained Melvilles own. In his research, Shelden discovered unexplored 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 luminarieslike Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes and Nathaniel HawthorneMelville found the courage to take the leap from light works of adventure to the hugely brilliant, utterly subversive Moby-Dick."--Jacket flap.
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