Melville read, admired, and studied poets from various traditions and periods of literary history—from the poets of classical Greece and Rome to the medieval, Renaissance, neo-classical, and romantic poets of Europe, and the contemporary, post-romantic poets writing during his own century.

In the thirty-seven volume set of Harper’s Classical Library that he purchased for himself in 1849 he could read Homer, Virgil, Aeschylus, Horace, and Ovid. And at different times he either purchased, borrowed, or received as gifts, translations of Dante Alighieri, Giovanni Boccaccio, Saadi, Omar Khayyam, Luís Vaz de Camões, and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra—poets writing in languages other than English, and from traditions other than those of the Eurocentric West.

Among poets writing in English, Melville read and admired Edmund Spenser, John Milton, John Dryden, William Blake, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Wordsworth, John Keats, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and Lord George Gordon Byron.

And judging from the books he owned, he must have also studied and read the poetry and philosophy of German and French writers such as Immanuel Kant, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Friedrich von Schiller, François-Marie Arouet de Voltaire, Jean Jacques Rousseau, and Arthur Schopenhauer.

We also know that he read and studied the poetry of contemporaries such as Robert Browning, Alfred Tennyson, and Matthew Arnold.

Listed below are some of the poets Melville read and studied at different stages of his life and career. Click on a poet’s name and a larger image will pop up. Or click on Milton’s portrait to the left to open up an album containing portraits of all the poets. Melville annotated many of the poets he read. His marks, comments, and underlinings provide insights into his feelings and thoughts. Steven Olsen-Smith, as General Editor, along with Peter Norberg, Associate General Editor, Dennis C. Marnon, Bibliographical Editor, and Jeremy Jensen, Technical Consultant are working at bringing Melville’s marginalia online through the Melville’s Marginalia Online project.

Dante Alighieri Matthew Arnold William Blake Elizabeth Barrett Browning Robert Browning Lord George Gordon Byron Luís Vaz de Camões Thomas Chatterton Samuel Taylor Coleridge John Dryden Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe Homer Horace John Keats Omar Khayyam John Milton Ovid Saadi Friedrich Von Schiller Percy Bysshe Shelley Edmund Spenser Alfred Lord Tennyson William Wordsworth