The company was founded in 2001 and is run by the husband-and-wife team of Dennis Loy Johnson and Valerie Merians in Hoboken, New Jersey.

[4] Johnson wrote a blog called "MobyLives" and after the 9/11 attacks collected poetry related to the event and published it as a book to great success, which launched the company.

[4] They intended Melville to be a low volume boutique that specializes in poetry and "highly literary" novels issuing less than six a year.

[5][4] In 2016, Melville House published The Making of Donald Trump by David Cay Johnston.

[7][4] Stop Smiling was an arts and culture magazine founded by J. C. Gabel in the Chicago suburb of Darien, Illinois.