The society was founded in February 1945 by
Harrison Hayford and
Tyrus Hillway. Both had done doctoral study in American literature at Yale with Stanley Williams. The membership of the new society included both academics and literary intellectuals in the
Melville Revival of the 1920s and 1930s and from university graduate programs that in the late 1930s began to train scholars in American literature. The Society overcame some initial skepticism. Hilway's editorial in the 1947
Melville Society Newsletter reported that critics "were willing to believe that the so-called Melville boom represented a temporary and esoteric enthusiasm for a fifth-rate literary figure...." He said that, to the contrary, the Society can reassure itself of its part in "virile and outreaching growth of Melville scholarship". ==Officers and presidents==