Herman Melville
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On April Fool's Day in 1856, a shape-shifting grifter boards a Mississippi riverboat to expose the pretenses, hypocrisies, and self-delusions of his fellow passengers. The con artist assumes numerous identities - a disabled beggar, a charity fundraiser, a successful businessman, an urbane gentleman - to win over his not-entirely-innocent dupes. The central character's shifting identities, as fluid as the river itself, reflect broader aspects of human...
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Widely believed to be among Melville's most popular works, "Redburn, His First Voyage" follows the young Wellingborough Redburn on his first journey at sea. A boy just on the verge of manhood, Redburn's decision to become a sailor is apparently at odds with his gentle upbringing, which has made him in many ways unprepared for the hardships of his chosen profession. He is unmercifully initiated into the life of a sailor by his fellow crewmen, a trying...
3) Moby Dick
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Obra cumbre de las letras universales, Moby Dick es una de las mayores obras escritas en lengua inglesa. La novela narra la aventura épica de la caza del gran cachalote blanco que emprenden los marineros del Pequod, comandados por el legendario Ahab, un obstinado y tiránico capitán de Nantuket, puerto célebre de la caza ballenera, quien, empecinado en tomar venganza del monstruo que lo mutiló años atrás, conduce a toda su tripulación a un...
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In Manhattan, an elderly lawyer's business is growing. Having two scriveners in his employ, the lawyer advertises for a third to meet demand. Enter Bartleby, a glum albeit quality scrivener. However, the lawyer quickly discovers that something is off with his new employee. When asked to perform any duties outside of copying, Bartleby responds with a canned I would prefer not to. Soon Bartleby is living at the office and performing less and less at...
5) The Piazza
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Don Benito faltered; then, like some somnambulist suddenly interfered with, vacantly stared at his visitor, and ended by looking down on the deck. He maintained this posture so long, that Captain Delano, almost equally disconcerted, and involuntarily almost as rude, turned suddenly from him, walking forward to accost one of the Spanish seamen for the desired information. But he had hardly gone five paces, when with a sort of eagerness Don Benito invited...
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Early American writer Herman Melville is best known for his great American novel "Moby Dick." However, Melville was also a prolific and honest short story writer. His stories play with irony, twisting the fates of his protagonists and making sure that the reader is left with a deep sense of wonder and enlightenment. Many of his works are set from an "outsider's" perspective of immigrants in early America, which is interesting considering that Melville...
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The various prose sketches here reprinted were first published by Melville, some in Harper's and some in Putnam's magazines, during the years from 1850 to 1856. "Hawthorne and His Mosses," the only piece of criticism in this collection, is particularly interesting viewed in the light of Melville's friendship with Hawthorne while they were neighbors at Pittsfield, Massachusetts. The other sketches cover a variety of homely subjects treated by Melville...
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HarperCollins is proud to present its new range of best-loved, essential classics.
'Struck dead by an angel of God! Yet the angel must hang!'
It is the end of the eighteenth century, and the navy recruits the eponymous hero - the 'Handsome Sailor' - to its fleet. Accused of mutinous behaviour, Billy Budd is forced to defend himself, but his fearful, silent response soon gives way to a terrible act of violence. The consequences are disastrous, and...
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This edition includes a modern introduction and a list of suggested further reading.Although most people do not think of Herman Melville as a particularly funny writer, his "Bartleby, the Scrivener" and The Confidence Man have kept readers laughing for a century and a half.
"Bartleby" is a simultaneously accurate and absurd depiction of life in a Wall Street office in the middle of the nineteenth century. It is the gentle comedy of a boss' helpless...
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"Es lunes, aunque no importa –podría ser cualquier otro día laborable–. El abogado y propietario de la oficina, por el bien de todos, designa a cada uno de sus subalternos las tareas que hay que resolver. Tres sencillas palabras, pronunciadas por el último empleado contratado, harán que, desde esos despachos, el mundo comience a tambalearse.
Con su «preferiría no hacerlo», Bartleby deja perplejo a todo aquel incapaz de ver más allá de...
11) The Bell-Tower
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Considered to be the least characteristic of Melville's stories, somewhat resembling the work of Nathaniel Hawthorne and Edgar Allan Poe, "The Bell-Tower" is a dark literary work that explores, though never fully reveals, its central mystery. An eccentric artist and architect dreams up plans for a magnificent bell tower. After receiving approval from the city, he happily begins construction. When city residents begin to notice strange occurrences...
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Chosen for inclusion in William Evans Burton's Cyclopediae of Wit and Humor of 1857, with an illustration by Henry Louis Stephens, "The Lightning-Rod Man" was the one Melville tale to be available throughout his lifetime, thanks to reissues of this volume. More a parable than a character-driven story, The Lightning-rod man is a charlatan who tries to profit by selling fearful people lightning rods during thunderstorms. The narrator has a difficult...
13) Benito Cereno
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A fictionalized account about the revolt on a 19th-century Spanish slavery ship, Benito Cereno was first published in three installments in 1855. Melville scholar Merton M. Sealts, Jr. called the story "an oblique comment on those prevailing attitudes toward blacks and slavery in the United States that would ultimately precipitate civil war between North and South." The famous question of what had cast such a shadow upon Cereno was used by American...
14) The Encantadas
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"The Encantadas" (or Enchanted Isles), is a series of ten descriptive sketches, and a reminiscence from Melville's sailor days revealing the ecologically pristine Galápagos Islands as both enchanting and horrifying. Containing some of Melville's "most memorable prose", The Encantadas were a critical success at a time when Melville's fortunes were down. After publication, the New York Dispatch cited the chapters as universally considered among the...
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"Llamadme Ismael." Muy pocos personajes literarios hay hoy tan conocidos como la ballena blanca, o Ismael o el capitán Ajab, y probablemente no haya un inicio de novela tan famoso como el de Moby-Dick. Concebida por Herman Melville como respuesta norteamericana a la gran literatura europea de finales del siglo XVIII y principios del XIX, Moby-Dick recoge la tradición romántica y gótica dando forma a un épico poema que ha llegado a ocupar en Estados...
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In this spirited saga, a promising young soldier is wounded at the battle of Bunker Hill, sets sail with John Paul Jones, and undertakes espionage at the behest of Benjamin Franklin. Herman Melville drew upon the obscure memoirs of a Revolutionary War veteran to create his only historical novel, combining Israel Potter's real-life reminiscences with fictional incidents that lead his hero into encounters with noteworthy figures of colonial America....
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Billy Budd and the Piazza Tales, by Herman Melville, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics:
• New introductions commissioned from todays top writers and scholars
• Biographies of the authors
• Chronologies...
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Moby Dick is one of the greatest American novels ever wrote. If you've always wanted to read the classic, but just don't have the time, this abridged version can help. At just 20,000 words long, this version of the classic novel will let you read Melville's classic in just hours, and provide you with an excellent overview of the entire novel.
The story tells the adventures of the wandering sailor Ishmael, and his voyage on the whaleship Pequod,...
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Moby Dick is quite a story-an adventure-man vs. nature! It's often called one of the great American novels. Reading it should be a breeze, right? Not quite... at least for most!
If you are struggling to get through Moby Dick or if you just want a bit more help, then this book is for you!
Inside you will find summaries of each scene, an overview of themes and characters, and even a condensed version of the book!
If you wish that Moby Dick was written...
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When the narrator decides to build a piazza at his new country home, his neighbours are amused when he decides to construct it on the north-facing side of his property. But the narrator is content, and when his view provides a glimpse of silver gleaming in the distance, he is convinced that his piazza provides a view of fairyland, and he decides to discover what lies in the distant mountains. "The Piazza" was written as an introduction to Herman Melville's...