# Anyone else famous for being the subject of a biography? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [August 11, 2011, 12:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-else-famous-for-being-the-subject-of-a-biography/592277 "2011-08-11T00:47:04Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 3\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2011, 4:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-else-famous-for-being-the-subject-of-a-biography/592277/21 "2011-08-11T16:01:24Z")
Herman Melville. By 1910, he was an obscure 19th Century author whose works were nearly forgotten. Only his first two books – **Omoo** and **Typee** – were successes, and his later books – the ones now considered milestones of literature – received critical thrashings. But in 1921, Russell Weaver’s biography **Herman Melville: Man, Mariner and Mystic** put him back on the literary map, as did Lewis Mumford’s biography from 1929, **Herman Melville: A Study of His Life and Vision**. Without those biographies (and other critical works of the 1920s), Melville would have remained forgotten. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2011, 4:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-else-famous-for-being-the-subject-of-a-biography/592277/22 "2011-08-11T16:14:44Z")
> [@RealityChuck](#): > > Herman Melville. By 1910, he was an obscure 19th Century author whose works were nearly forgotten. Only his first two books – **Omoo** and **Typee** – were successes, and his later books – the ones now considered milestones of literature – received critical thrashings. But in 1921, Russell Weaver’s biography **Herman Melville: Man, Mariner and Mystic** put him back on the literary map, as did Lewis Mumford’s biography from 1929, **Herman Melville: A Study of His Life and Vision**. Without those biographies (and other critical works of the 1920s), Melville would have remained forgotten. I found this difficult to believe – Didn’t “Moby Dick” remain in print? They mad a silent film version of it! But cruiding through Googfle books N-Gram, I find this: > **[The Bookman](https://books.google.com/books?id=bnMSAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA600&dq=%22Moby%2BDick%22&hl=en&ei=7v5DTqrOJYbEgQfN28zaCQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result)** and this, from 1900: > **[The Nation](https://books.google.com/books?id=xgYDAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA366&dq=%22Moby%2BDick%22&hl=en&ei=if9DTo3YKMeugQeHj_WgCQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=6&ved=0CEsQ6AEwBTgK#v=onepage&q=%22Moby%20Dick%22&f=false)** It’s very surprising the Moby Dick was actually out of print for many years, and had few readers. ---
**Author:** ![WordMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e8c25b/32.png) [@WordMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WordMan)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2011, 8:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-else-famous-for-being-the-subject-of-a-biography/592277/23 "2011-08-11T20:50:14Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > It’s very surprising the Moby Dick was actually out of print for many years, and had few readers. Oh yeah, Melville was nowhere for years. Heck, Faulkner and Fitzgerald had some/most (?) of their books out of print until Malcolm Cowley anthologized their works and framed their writing from a scholarly standpoint… > **[Malcolm Cowley](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malcolm_Cowley)** > > Malcolm Cowley (August 24, 1898 – March 27, 1989) was an American writer, editor, historian, poet, and literary critic. His best known works include his first book of poetry, Blue Juniata (1929), and his memoir, Exile's Return (1934; rev. 1951), written as a chronicler and fellow traveller of the Lost Generation and an influential editor and talent scout at Viking Press. > Cowley was born August 24, 1898, in Belsano, Cambria County, Pennsylvania, to William Cowley and Josephine Hutmacher. He gre... > [@](#): > > As an editorial consultant to Viking Press, he pushed for the publication of Jack Kerouac’s On the Road. In 1946 Cowley edited Viking’s edition of The Portable Faulkner, and his introduction is generally considered a turning point in William Faulkner’s reputation in the United States at a time when many of his early works were in danger of going out of print. Cowley’s work anthologizing 28 Fitzgerald short stories and editing a reissue of Tender is the Night, restructured based on Fitzgerald’s notes, both in 1951, were key to reviving Fitzgerald’s reputation as well, and his introduction to Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio, written in the early 1960s, is said to have had a similar effect on Anderson’s reputation. Other works of literary and critical importance include Eight More Harvard Poets (1923), A Second Flowering: Works & Days of the Lost Generation (1973), And I Worked at the Writer’s Trade (1978), and The Dream of the Golden Mountains: Remembering the 1930s (1980).[citation needed] [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-else-famous-for-being-the-subject-of-a-biography/592277.md?page=1)