An accessible and highly readable guide to the story of Melville
criticism as it has developed over the past century and a half.
Herman Melville is among the most thoroughly canonized authors in
American literature, and the body of criticism dealing with his writing
is immense. Until now, however, there has been no standard volume on the
history of Melvillecriticism. That a volume on this subject is timely
and important is shown by the number of introductions and companions to
Melville's work that have been published during the last few years (none
of which focuses on the criticalreception of Melville's works), as well
as the steady stream of critical monographs and scholarly biographies
that have been published on Melville since the 1920s. Melville's Mirrors
provides Melville scholars and graduateand undergraduate students with
an accessible guide to the story of Melville criticism as it has
developed over the years. It is a valuable reference for research
libraries and for the personal libraries of scholars of Melville and of
nineteenth-century American literature in general, and it is also a
potential textbook for major-author courses on Melville, which are
offered at many universities.
BRIAN YOTHERS is the Frances Spatz Leighton Endowed Distinguished
Professor of English at the University of Texas at El Paso and associate
editor of Leviathan: A Journal of Melville Studies. He is the author of
Reading Abolition: The Critical Reception of Harriet Beecher Stowe and
Frederick Douglass (Camden House, 2016).
