《白鲸》于1851年发表，是一篇海洋题材的小说，小说描写了亚哈船长为了追逐并杀死白鲸（实为白色抹香鲸）莫比·迪克，最终与白鲸同归于尽的故事。故事营造了一种让人置身海上航行、随时遭遇各种危险甚至是死亡的氛围，是作者的代表作。

Moby Dick; or, The Whale (1851) is a novel by Herman Melville considered an outstanding work of Romanticism and the American Renaissance. Ishmael narrates the monomaniacal quest of Ahab, captain of the whaler Pequod, for revenge on Moby Dick, a white whale which on a previous voyage destroyed Ahab's ship and severed his leg at the knee. Although the novel was a commercial failure and out of print at the time of the author's death in 1891, its reputation as a Great American Novel grew during the twentieth century.

Herman Melville(August 1, 1819 – September 28, 1891) was an American novelist, writer of short stories, and poet from the American Renaissance period. The bulk of his writings was published between 1846 and 1857. Best known for his sea adventure Typee (1846) and his whaling novel Moby-Dick (1853), he was almost forgotten during the last thirty years of his life.