This book is a reworked version of my doctoral dissertation, which I defended in 2014. As I soon thereafter found work as Associate Professor of Scandinavian Literature, my interest in Herman Melville ended up dormant for several years. In 2021, the possibility to finally turn the dissertation into a book appeared.
It is with the greatest of pleasures that I preface this book dedicated to the life and work of Professor John Marsden Goldsmid. John Goldsmid studied entomology at Rhodes University in South Africa, graduating with an M.Sc. based on finding the host behaviour of tick larvae.