Herman Melville's Israel Potter is the novelized tale of a man who really did fight in the American Revolution -- a man who lived a life of very real adventure. After fighting in the revolution, he went on to be a part of the newly-established United States Navy, ended up serving as a secret courier for Benjamin Franklin! Bits of this are fiction, and may be even more spectacular...

Author Biography

Herman Melville (1819 - 1891) was an American novelist, short story writer and poet of the American Renaissance period. His best known works include Typee (1846), a romantic account of his experiences in Polynesian life and his whaling novel Moby-Dick (1851). His work was almost forgotten during his last thirty years. Herman Melville's writing draws on his experience at sea as a common sailor, exploration of literature and philosophy and engagement in the contradictions of American society in a period of rapid change. He developed a complex, baroque style: the vocabulary is rich and original, a strong sense of rhythm infuses the elaborate sentences, the imagery is often mystical or ironic and the abundance of allusion extends to scripture, myth, philosophy, literature and the visual arts.