billy budd sailor and other stories herman melville

Melville began work on the novella in November 1886, revising and expanding it from time to time, but he left the manuscript in disarray. The ship's Captain, Edward Vere, recognizes Billy's lack of intent, but claims that the law of mutiny requires him to sentence Billy to be hanged. Billy Budd is a 'handsome sailor' who strikes and inadvertently kills his false accuser, Master-at-arms John Claggart.

Acclaimed by critics as a masterpiece when a hastily transcribed version was finally published in 1924, it quickly took its place as a classic second only to Moby-Dick among Melville's works. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.Billy Budd, Sailor (An Inside Narrative) is a novella by American writer Herman Melville, left unfinished at his death in 1891. With more than 1,500 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Sealts, Jr., and the authoritative Northwestern-Newberry text of The Piazza Tales.įor more than sixty-five years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. This Penguin Classics edition features the Reading Text of Billy Budd, Sailor, as edited from a genetic study of the manuscript by Harrison Hayford and Merton M. Also including The Piazza Tales in full, this collection demonstrates why Melville stands not only among the greatest writers of the nineteenth century, but also as one of our greatest contemporaries. In these stories, Melville cuts to the heart of race, class, capitalism, and globalism in America, deftly navigating political and social issues that resonate as clearly in our time as they did in Melville's. In the sorrowful tragedy of Billy Budd, Sailor the controlled rage of Benito Cereno and the tantalizing enigma of Bartleby, the Scrivener Melville reveals himself as a singular storyteller of tremendous range and compelling power.

Though best-known for his epic masterpiece Moby-Dick, Herman Melville also left a body of short stories arguably unmatched in American fiction.

A new, definitive edition of Herman Melville's virtuosic short stories-American classics wrought with scorching fury, grim humor, and profound beauty

Billy budd sailor and other stories herman melville