The Melville-Hawthorne Connection

<p> This book offers the first in-depth examination of the friendship between the authors. Hawthorne's influence upon <I>Moby-Dick</I> is weighed as is the probability of Melville's influence upon Hawthorne. This was a friendship whose true basis--beyond an almost instantaneous mutual affinity and admiration for each other--was intellectual ideas and literary pursuits and the conversations between the two hewed mostly to philosophical and spiritual rumination as well as to those matters that concern writers most: craft and publishing.</p>