Moby-Dick

Herman Melville published his cetological epic in 1851 to commercial indifference — it sold fewer than 4,000 copies in his lifetime, and he died in 1891 convinced he was a failure. Twentieth-century critics rediscovered the novel and elevated it to canonical status. Its opening line — "Call me Ishmael" — is the most recognised first sentence in American literature. The Pequod's obsessive voyage after the white whale became the definitive American allegory for ambition, vengeance, and the destructive sublime. It is now considered the greatest American novel ever written.