Herman Melville

Tor Classics are affordably-priced editions designed to attract the young reader. Original dynamic cover art enthusiastically represents the excitement of each story. Appropriate "reader friendly" type sizes have been chosen for each title--offering clear, accurate, and readable text. All editions are complete and unabridged, and feature Introductions and Afterwords. This edition of Billy Budd includes a Foreword, Biographical Note, and Afterword...

The truth is, my wife, like all the rest of the world, cares not a fig for my philosophical jabber. Thus wrote Melville in 1856, in the house where he had penned 'Moby-Dick" some six years earlier (Arrowhead in Pittsfield, Massachusetts). An allegorical tale that reveals a very unsettling home life and professional life for this American genius, who by the time this story was published was nearly forgotten.

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...

"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...

Written as an introductory story to The Piazza Tales, the protagonist of The Piazza, idealizes a radiant spot on the mountain he looks upon from his piazza. Traveling to the spot he realizes it is a house, occupied by the unhappy girl Marianna, who longs to see the lucky individual who lives in the white house she looks upon from her window. The narrator realizes he has been the object of a fantasy alike to his own, and leaves thinking how all idealism...

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...

"Bartleby" oder "Bartleby der Schreiber" ist eine Erzählung des amerikanischen Schriftstellers Herman Melville, die unter dem Originaltitel Bartleby the Scrivener veröffentlicht wurde. Es ist das erste Werk, das Melville nach Moby Dick verfasste, und wurde zunächst anonym im November und Dezember 1853 in zwei Teilen in der Zeitschrift Putnam's Monthly Magazine veröffentlicht. Ein älterer Anwalt und Notar berichtet als Ich-Erzähler von einem...

If you don't know Melville's letters to Hawthorne, you don't know Melville. These letters are full of passion, humor, doubt, and spiritual yearning, and offer an intimate view of Melville's personality. Lyrical and effusive, they are literary works in themselves. This correspondence has been out of print for decades, and even when it was in print it appeared in scholarly volumes of Melville's complete correspondence, aimed at the academy. The Divine...

The ten "sketches" comprising The Encantadas, or Enchanted Isles are based largely on author Herman Melville's experience in the Galápagos Islands, combined with the recorded history of the islands, local folklore, and sailors' stories. The earlier sketches present a daunting description of the islands and their fauna. Belying their tropical location, there is nothing of paradise in these volcanic remnants-home to large numbers of lizards, snakes,...

"Redburn - His First Voyage" is an 1849 novel by American writer Herman Melville. The story follows a fifteen-year-old boy from the state of New York called Wellington Redburn, who dreams only of running away to sea. When he finally manages to realize his goal, however, he finds that the reality of a life at sea is far less romantic than he envisioned.