Although it is today considered one of the “great books,” Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick; or, The Whale was not a success during his lifetime. On the contrary, it was a disappointment to his readers that fancied his earlier light-hearted (and largely fictional) travel adventure books set in the South Pacific. During the writing of Moby-Dick (1850-51), Melville met Nathaniel Hawthorne and took time away from his novel in progress to review the short-story collection Mosses From an Old Manse, which just …