Melville produced his finest book, Moby-Dick, in 1851. Only a few critics recognized the genius of the work, and Melville had serious doubts about his future career. Pierre (1852) was too ambiguous and complex for Melville's audience. The story, somewhat autobiographical, deals with a young writer who seeks strict honesty but finds only disaster for himself and those around him. Israel Potter (1855), somewhat more successful, was first published as a magazine serial. It is a rewrite of a story about an American Revolutionary veteran who returns to America after fifty years of adventures abroad, having learned to be a survivor through the application of good sense. The Piazza Tales (1856) contains some of Melville's finest writing, shorter works such as "Bartleby, the Scrivener," a consideration of the values of Wall Street; the dark "Benito Cereno"; and a work that has grown in respect over the years, "The Encantadas," a philosophical look into the Galapagos Islands. The Confidence-Man (1857), an enigmatic consideration of identity and self-deception taking place on a Mississippi River steamboat, was the last work of fiction that Melville published in his lifetime. These last works, especially The Piazza Tales, found some small audience, but Melville was terribly discouraged and withdrew from his efforts to support himself and his family through writing.
Despite his disappointment, Melville did continue to write part-time. During the final days of the Civil War, he created some moving poetry that he eventually published in Harper's New Monthly Magazine and in a volume titled Battle-Pieces (1866). A prose "Supplement" calls for decency on the part of the victorious North during the reconstruction period, a position that Abraham Lincoln espoused but did not live to bring into effect. Again, contemporary reviews were tepid.
