Full Name: Herman Melville; Profession: American novelist, short-story writer, and poet of the American Renaissance period; Nationality: American; Born: 1 August 1819; Birthplace: New York City, New York, United States; Generation: American Renaissance / early Victorian-era 19th-century literary generation; Chinese Zodiac: Rabbit; Zodiac Sign: Leo; Age in 2026: 207; Marital Status: Married (to Elizabeth Shaw from 1847 until his death). Children: four (sons Malcolm and Stanwix; daughters Elizabeth and Frances). Description: Herman Melville was an influential American writer best known for his sea novels, above all the masterpiece Moby-Dick, whose vast symbolic drama of a whaling voyage, the white whale, and Captain Ahab’s obsessive quest reshaped the possibilities of the novel and later secured Melville’s place among the greatest authors in world literature; drawing on his own years as a sailor and whaleman, he produced early South Seas travel narratives such as Typee and Omoo that first brought him fame, then increasingly complex works like Mardi, Redburn, and White-Jacket, culminating in Moby-Dick’s philosophical exploration of fate, free will, evil, and the inscrutability of the divine; his shorter fiction, including “Bartleby, the Scrivener,” offers pioneering psychological insight into alienation, passive resistance, and modern office life, while the posthumously published Billy Budd meditates on law, conscience, and sacrifice aboard a British warship; in his later decades, Melville turned largely to poetry with collections like Battle-Pieces, a deeply personal response to the American Civil War, and Clarel, an ambitious allegorical verse pilgrimage through the Holy Land that probes faith, doubt, and spiritual crisis, all composed while he lived in relative obscurity working as a customs inspector in New York City; long underappreciated, Melville’s oeuvre was rediscovered in the early twentieth century by critics who recognized the depth of his symbolism, his use of myth and biblical allusion, and his probing of the human soul, making him central to modern studies of American Romanticism, maritime literature, and the spiritual and existential dimensions of the American imagination. Cause of Death: Heart failure due to cardiovascular disease (heart attack) at his home in New York City on 28 September 1891.