Moby-Dick became known as a great American novel many years after its publication—most notably on the 100th birthday of its author, Herman Melville. In fact, it was a commercial failure during his lifetime, and Melville went to his grave believing the book was a flop.

It took Melville only about 18 months to write Moby-Dick, which was a shorter timeframe than he had anticipated.

Herman Melville gained much of his knowledge about whaling from his time working aboard whale ships.

Queequeg was perhaps the first sympathetic Polynesian character in Western fiction.

The novel was originally published in England under the title The Whale.

The infamous whale in Moby-Dick was inspired by a real-life, hard-to-catch white whale known as Mocha Dick.

Initial British readers were mostly positive about the novel, though many disliked that the narrator appeared to die on the boat, with no epilogue confirming Ishmael’s survival in the original British edition.

American readers had a more mixed reaction to the book. They also had to wait a considerable amount of time to read it due to a copyright dispute.