White Jacket by Herman Melville, Fiction, Classics, Sea Stories -- Herman Melvil

<p>The mixture of journalism, history and fiction; the presentation of a sequence of striking characters; the metaphor of a sailing ship as the world in miniature--all of these prefigure his next novel, Moby-Dick. The symbolism of the color white, introduced in this novel in the form of the narrator's jacket, is more fully expanded upon in Moby-Dick, where it becomes an all-encompassing "blankness."</p><p>Melville's (best known for his classic whaling novel) White Jacket was first published in 1850 and is considered to be a semi-biographical book, written from Melville's own personal experiences while returning home to the Atlantic Coast from the South Seas with the American Navy on a man-o'-war vessel. In the note preceding the novel, Melville states, "In the year 1843 I shipped as 'ordinary seaman' on board of a United States frigate then lying in a harbor of the Pacific Ocean. After remaining in this frigate for more than a year, I was discharged from the service . . ."</p><br><br><b>Author:</b> Herman Melville<br><b>Publisher:</b> Aegypan<br><b>Published:</b> 11/01/2006<br><b>Pages:</b> 336<br><b>Binding Type:</b> Paperback<br><b>Weight:</b> 1.09lbs<br><b>Size:</b> 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.75d<br><b>ISBN:</b> 9781598180701