Herman Melville ~ Author ~ MOBY Dick 2094 Block of 6 x 20¢ US Postage Stamps

On August 1, 1984 in New Bedford; the USPS issued the fourth addition to the Literary Arts series, by celebrating the 165th anniversary of the birthdate of Herman Melville, an American novelist, short story writer, essayist and poet. He is often classified as part of Dark romanticism genre. Melville's longest novel, Moby-Dick, won recognition in the 20th century as one of the chief literary masterpieces of both American and world literature. His posthumous novella Billy Budd, first published in 1924 and then in a revised and corrected text in 1962 based on a close study of the original manuscripts, rivals Moby-Dick in popularity, and in particular has become a key text of the field of law and literature. Herman Melville died in 1891 at the age of 72.