A social, cultural, and literary history of the New York literary scene between 1833 and 1857, The Raven and the Whale focuses on the long and acrimonious battle between the conservative Lewis Gaylord Clark, the editor of the influential Knickerbocker, and his camp, and the democratic Evert Duyckinck, a Wiley and Putnam editor who commissioned works by both Poe and Melville, and the "Young America" over the direction that American literature should take.