More and more readers and droves of scholars are turning to the pages of Moby Dick and other masterpieces by Herman Melville for an excursion into the world of the great American novel But in his lifetime New Englander Melville whose real-life adventures were the source for his spellbinding fiction found that adulation eluded him He had a bestseller in his first novel Typee at age 27 But by the time he was 30 in 1850 he was sitting at his desk in the Berkshires writing Moby Dick as a man possessed novel didnt attract a substantial readership and Melville lived out the rest of his days in obscurity His reputation began to be revived in the 1920s Today his audience is huge and interest in the life and times of an America icon is burgeoning Heres his life story briefly told by award-winning journalist Robert Wernick