"In this interdisciplinary study of the development of institutional censorship, Clare Spark explores the complexities of 20th-century American cultural politics through the protagonists of the Melville Revival. She investigates closely the history of the Revival and its key critics, who manipulated Melville's life and writings in the service of their own particular social and political agendas.

Spark's assertions are based on her exploration of either newly opened or previously unexplored archival materials of leading Melville scholars - Raymond Weaver, Charles Olson, Henry A. Murray, and Jay Leyda."--BOOK JACKET.