Melville then devoted himself to lecture tours and a global voyage that he abandoned in San Francisco. He published some poetry in his remaining years, but these works were of little note.
Melville's final years were marked by personal tragedy. His son Malcolm shot himself in 1867, and another son, Stanwix, died after a long and debilitating illness in 1886. During his final years Melville did return to writing prose, and completed the novel "Billy Budd," which was not published until 1924, several decades after his death. Melville completedBilly Budd, the story of a sailor who accidentally kills his master after being provoked by a false charge, in April of 1891, and five months later he died, on September 28 in New York City.
Herman Melville, who died almost forgotten although he had once been a popular author and had left behind ten notable books of prose fiction and four of verse, has gathered increasing fame, especially for his metaphysical whaling novel, "Moby-Dick." Like much of his writing, Moby-Dick originates in his experiences as a common sailor and in the complex reactions of his lively mind to ageless spiritual questions and to the ebullient society of his time. One of the few American books recognized as a world classic, it has overshadowed the considerable achievement of his other work, which is diverse and experimental and, though sometimes flawed, often shows remarkable control. His narratives of adventure in the South Seas are small masterworks of the genre. His short tales, "Bartleby" and "Benito Cereno," are carefully crafted and profoundly sensitive critiques of his own age that emerge as fables applicable to a later day. His paired sketch, "The Paradise of Bachelors and the Tartarus of Maids," combines cunning social criticism and psychological insight. He wrote perhaps a dozen poems of distinction, most of them brief and the outgrowth of his travels or his musings on the events of the Civil War.