Herman Melville (1819-1891) was an American novelist and poet who drew on years at sea, including a stint aboard a whaler and a desertion in the Marquesas, for his early and popular South Seas books. Moby-Dick (1851) sold poorly and effectively ended his career as a working novelist; he spent his last two decades as a New York customs inspector, writing poetry and leaving Billy Budd unpublished at his death. His reputation was rebuilt almost from nothing in the 1920s.