Raymond M. (Raymond Melbourne) Weaver

Raymond Melbourne Weaver was an American literary scholar and professor of English and comparative literature at Columbia University. He is remembered above all for Herman Melville: Mariner and Mystic (1921), widely noted as the first full biography of Melville and an important early step in reviving interest in the author.

Born in 1888, Weaver spent much of his career teaching at Columbia, where he also worked on editions of Melville's writing. His scholarship helped introduce Melville to a wider twentieth-century audience at a time when the novelist's reputation had faded.

Weaver died on April 4, 1948. Though he wrote and taught in his own time, his lasting place in literary history comes from the role he played in recovering and reshaping the legacy of Herman Melville.