The Divine Magnet: Herman Melville's Letters to Nathaniel Hawthorne

If you don't know Melville's letters to Hawthorne, you don't know Melville. These letters are full of passion, humor, doubt, and spiritual yearning, and offer an intimate view of Melville's personality. Lyrical and effusive, they are literary works in themselves. This correspondence has been out of print for decades, and even when it was in print it appeared in scholarly volumes of Melville's complete correspondence, aimed at the academy. The Divine Magnet provides the general literary public as well as the college classroom with a reliable and beautifully produced volume of Melville's letters to Hawthorne, along with supplemental material, highlighting the relationship between these luminaries of American letters.

Mark Niemeyer is professor of American literature and American history at the Université de Bourgogne in Dijon, France. His research focuses on nineteenth-century writings of the antebellum period and is frequently concerned with questions related to cultural nationalism and national identity. He has published numerous articles and is co-editor of several editions of works by Herman Melville, including the French "Folio Classique" edition of Mardi (2011), the Norton Critical edition of The Confidence-Man (2005), and the French "Pléiade" editions of Mardi (1997) and Moby-Dick (2006). He has also served as a contributing scholar on the Northwestern-Newberry editions of Moby-Dick (1988) and Clarel (1991). He is co-editor of Literature on the Move: Comparing Diasporic Ethnicities in Europe and the Americas (2002) and co-author of an American and British history textbook for French students, Repères de civilisation: Grande-Bretagne, Etats-Unis (2003). Niemeyer has also published illustrated works of general interest including Water: The Essence of Life (2008) and Wonders of the World: World of Man (2010).