The Third Man: A Shadow Figure in the Origins Story of the Melville Revival Revealed

Abstract: This essay is the fourth and final chapter in the author's research on the origins of the Melville revival. The previous studies appeared in Leviathan 15.1 (March 2013), 19.1 (March 2017), and 23.1 (2021), with each essay asking the question, who were the persons most responsible for launching what was arguably the greatest revival in American literary history? This essay details the contributions of a figure long overlooked by literary historians, the poet and scholar Charles Wilbert Snow, a Columbia University classmate of Carl Van Doren and later a professor of Charles Olson. It was Snow who first encouraged Van Doren to read Melville's work, before Van Doren himself encouraged Raymond Weaver.