 Although he did not have a Ph.D., Leyda became fascinated with Herman Melville and became an important figure in the Melville revival.These scholars moved beyond the acceptance of Melville's first-person accounts in his works as reliably autobiographical.To provide concrete evidence, Leyda searched libraries, family papers, local archives and newspapers across New England and New York to gather "The Melville Log" (1951) to document Melville's day to day activities and transactions.