Melville’s City argues that Melville’s relationship to the city is considerably more complex than has generally been believed. By placing him in the historical and cultural context of nineteenth-century New York, Kelley presents a Melville who borrows from the colourful cultural variety of the city while at the same time investigating its darker and more dangerous social aspects. Kelley shows that images both from Melville and from popular sources of the time represent New York variously as Capital, Labyrinth, City of God, and City of Man; she argues that Melville resists a generalising or totalising representation of the city by uncovering its hybrid identity, and giving voice to the poor, the displaced, and the racially excluded. Through examination of works spanning Melville’s career, she forges a new analysis of the connections between urban and literary form.