Hershel Parker, H. Fletcher Brown Professor Emeritus of American Romanticism at the University of Delaware, is Associate General Editor of The Writings of Herman Melvilleand author of the two-volume Herman Melville: A Biography. His other books include Flawed Texts and Verbal Icons and Reading "Billy Budd," and he is coeditor, with Brian Higgins, of Critical Essays on Herman Melville's "Moby-Dick."