White Jacket »

Herman Melville's legend is as mammoth and elusive as the whale that established it. The author's Moby-Dick; Or, The Whale stands as one of literature's greatest epics, a story of mythological proportions that was grounded in real life and a new way of storytelling. Melville's work, underappreciated in its time, remains as much subject to debate and interpretation as it was when he first caught the public eye with his South Seas adventure, Typee, in 1846.

So with many odds and ends of patches-old socks old trowser-legs and the like-I bedarned and bequilted the inside of my jacket till it became all over stiff and padded as King James's cotton-stuffed and dagger-proof doublet; and no buckram or steel hauberk stood up more stoutly.