Moby-Dick is a novel considered an outstanding work of Romanticism and the American Renaissance.

Ishmael narrates the monomaniacal quest of Ahab, captain of the whaler Pequod, for revenge on Moby Dick, a white whale which on a previous voyage destroyed Ahab's ship and severed his leg at the knee.

Although the novel was a commercial failure and out of print at the time of the author's death in 1891, its reputation as a Great American Novel grew during the twentieth century.

D. H. Lawrence called it "e;one of the strangest and most wonderful books in the world,"e; and "e;the greatest book of the sea ever written."e;Call me Ishmael"e; is one of world literature's most famous opening sentences.