"Isle of the Cross" (c. 1853) is a possible unpublished and lost work by Herman Melville, which would have been his eighth book, coming after the commercial and critical failures of Moby-Dick (1851) and Pierre: or, The Ambiguities (1852).[1] Melville biographer Hershel Parker suggests that the work, perhaps a novel, perhaps a story, was what had been known as the "story of Agatha," completed around May 1853. He further suggests that finishing the work showed that Melville had not, as many biographers argued, been discouraged and turned away from fiction.[2]
Unlike almost all of Melville's other fiction, this work has a female central character.