Herman Melville was an American novelist, short story writer, and poet of the American Renaissance period. Among his best-known works are Moby-Dick (1851); Typee (1846), a romanticized account of his experiences in Polynesia; and Billy Budd, Sailor, a posthumously published novella. At the time of his death, Melville was no longer well known to the public, but the 1919 centennial of his birth was the starting point of a Melville revival. Moby-Dick eventually would be considered one of the great American novels.
John Edward Masefield was an English poet and writer, and Poet Laureate from 1930 until 1967. Among his best known works are the children's novels The Midnight Folk and The Box of Delights, and the poems The Everlasting Mercy and "Sea-Fever".
Moby-Dick; or, The Whale is an 1851 novel by American writer Herman Melville. The book is the sailor Ishmael's narrative of the maniacal quest of Ahab, captain of the whaling ship Pequod, for vengeance against Moby Dick, the giant white sperm whale that bit off his leg on the ship's previous voyage. A contribution to the literature of the American Renaissance, Moby-Dick was published to mixed reviews, was a commercial failure, and was out of print at the time of the author's death in 1891. Its reputation as a Great American Novel was established only in the 20th century, after the 1919 centennial of its author's birth. William Faulkner said he wished he had written the book himself, and D. H. Lawrence called it "one of the strangest and most wonderful books in the world" and "the greatest book of the sea ever written". Its opening sentence, "Call me Ishmael", is among world literature's most famous.
Mother Goose is a character that originated in children's fiction, as the imaginary author of a collection of French fairy tales and later of English nursery rhymes. She also appeared in a song, the first stanza of which often functions now as a nursery rhyme. The character also appears in a pantomime tracing its roots to 1806.
Northern storm petrels are seabirds in the genus Hydrobates in the family Hydrobatidae, part of the order Procellariiformes. The family was once lumped with the similar austral storm petrels in the combined storm petrels, but have been split, as they were not closely related. These smallest of seabirds feed on planktonic crustaceans and small fish picked from the surface, typically while hovering. Their flight is fluttering and sometimes bat-like.
The European storm petrel, also known as British storm petrel, or just storm petrel, is a species of seabird in the northern storm petrel family, Hydrobatidae. The small, square-tailed bird is entirely black except for a broad, white rump and a white band on the under wings, and it has a fluttering, bat-like flight. The large majority of the population breeds on islands off the coasts of Europe, with the greatest numbers in the Faroe Islands, United Kingdom, Ireland, and Iceland. The Mediterranean population is a separate subspecies, but is inseparable at sea from its Atlantic relatives; its strongholds are Filfla Island (Malta), Sicily, and the Balearic Islands.
St. Elmo's fire is a weather phenomenon in which luminous plasma is created by a corona discharge from a rod-like object such as a mast, spire, chimney, or animal horn in an atmospheric electric field. It has also been observed on the leading edges of airplanes, as in the case of British Airways Flight 009, and by U.S. Air Force pilots.
Howard Pyle was an American illustrator, painter, and author, primarily of books for young people. He was a native of Wilmington, Delaware, and he spent the last year of his life in Florence, Italy.
Moby Dick is a 1956 period adventure drama film directed and produced by John Huston, adapted by Huston and Ray Bradbury from Herman Melville's 1851 novel Moby-Dick. It stars Gregory Peck as Captain Ahab, Richard Basehart as Ishmael, and Leo Genn as Starbuck, with supporting performances by James Robertson Justice, Harry Andrews, Friedrich von Ledebur, Bernard Miles, Noel Purcell and Orson Welles. The film was a co-production of the United Kingdom and the United States.
Jessie Willcox Smith was an American illustrator during the Golden Age of American illustration. She was considered "one of the greatest pure illustrators". A contributor to books and magazines during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Smith illustrated stories and articles for clients such as Century, Collier's, Leslie's Weekly, Harper's, McClure's, Scribners, and the Ladies' Home Journal. She had an ongoing relationship with Good Housekeeping, which included a long-running Mother Goose series of illustrations and also the creation of all of the Good Housekeeping covers from December 1917 to 1933. Among the more than 60 books that Smith illustrated were Louisa May Alcott's Little Women and An Old-Fashioned Girl, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's Evangeline, and Robert Louis Stevenson's A Child's Garden of Verses.
Moby-Dick is an 1851 novel by Herman Melville that describes the voyage of the whaleship Pequod, led by Captain Ahab, who leads his crew on a hunt for the whale Moby Dick. There have been a number of adaptations of Moby-Dick in various media.
The Sea Beast is a 1926 American silent drama film directed by Millard Webb, starring John Barrymore, Dolores Costello and George O'Hara. The film was a major commercial success and one of the biggest pictures of 1926 becoming Warner Brothers' highest grossing film. The Sea Beast is the first adaptation of Herman Melville's 1851 novel Moby-Dick, a story about a monomaniacal hunt for a great white whale. However, the film alters the novel's plotline by establishing prequel and sequel elements that are not in the original story—such as the romancing of Esther and Ahab's safe return, respectively—and substitutes a happy ending for Melville's original tragic one. Some of the characters in the film do not appear in Melville's original novel. The film was so successful that in 1930 Warner Bros redid it in English and German, under the title Moby Dick, with Joan Bennett taking the role of Ahab's love because Dolores Costello was pregnant at the time.
Moby Dick is a 1930 American pre-Code film from Warner Bros., directed by Lloyd Bacon, and starring John Barrymore, Joan Bennett and Walter Lang. The film is a sound remake of the 1926 silent movie, The Sea Beast, which also starred Barrymore. It is the first film adaptation of Herman Melville's 1851 novel Moby Dick that includes a soundtrack.
Salt-Water Poems and Ballads is a book of poetry on themes of seafaring and maritime history by John Masefield. It was first published in 1916 by Macmillan, with illustrations by Charles Pears.
Jessie Lewars, also known as Mrs. James Thomson, was the youngest daughter of John Lewars, a supervisor of excise. Following the death of her 69-year-old father in 1789, Jessie was only 11 years old, when she and her brother John moved to a house in Millhole Brae that lay opposite that of Robert Burns in Dumfries. Jessie was a close Burns family friend and when nearly at the age of eighteen helped the family by nursing Robert in the days leading up to his death and doing the domestic chores.
Captain Ahab is a fictional character and one of the protagonists in Herman Melville's Moby-Dick (1851). He is the monomaniacal captain of the whaling ship Pequod. On a previous voyage, the white whale Moby Dick bit off Ahab's leg, and he now wears a prosthetic leg made out of whalebone. The whaling voyage of the Pequod ends up as a hunt for revenge on the whale, as Ahab forces the crew members to support his fanatical mission. When Moby Dick is finally sighted, Ahab's hatred robs him of all caution, and the whale drags him to his death beneath the sea and sinks the Pequod.
Father Mapple is a fictional character in Herman Melville's novel Moby-Dick (1851). A former whaler, he has become a preacher in the New Bedford Whaleman's Chapel. Ishmael, the narrator of the novel, hears Mapple's sermon on the subject of Jonah, who was swallowed by a whale but did not turn against God.
Sarah Stilwell Weber was an American illustrator who studied at Drexel Institute under Howard Pyle. She illustrated books and national magazines, like The Saturday Evening Post, Vogue, and The Century Magazine.
Sarah Morewood (1823–1863) was a poet and literary figure who developed a close relationship in the 1850s with her nearest neighbor in the Berkshires, the novelist Herman Melville. In 1983 Professor Michael Rogin of the University of California, Berkeley, was the first to suggest that Morewood was a model for the character of Isabel in Melville's dark novel of romance and ambition Pierre; or, The Ambiguities (1852). Thirty-three years later biographer Michael Shelden argued in Melville in Love (2016) that Morewood influenced Melville's work not only in Pierre, but also in Moby-Dick (1851), and that for much of the 1850s the two were lovers.
Pip, short for Pippin, is the African-American cabin-boy on the whaling-ship Pequod in Herman Melville's 1851 novel, Moby-Dick. When Pip falls overboard he is left stranded in the sea, and rescued only by chance and becomes "mad." The book's narrator, Ishmael, however, thinks that this "madness" gives Pip the power to see the world as it is. Pip is first described as "insignificant," but is the only member of the crew to awaken feelings of humanity in Ahab, the ship's monomaniacal captain.
Illustration by Jessie Willcox Smith for The Water-Babies
Illustration by Howard Pyle for Harper's Magazine , 1902
