Herman Melville

While 'Moby Dick' is Herman Melville's best known book, 'Billy Budd, Sailor' is considered by many to be his greatest work. Billy, a foundling from Bristol, has an innocence, good looks and a natural charisma that make him popular with the crew. His only physical defect is a stutter which grows worse when under intense emotion. He arouses the antagonism of the ship's master-at-arms, John Claggart. Claggart, while not unattractive, seems somehow defective...

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.

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...

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...

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...

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...

Call me Ishmael. I have set sail on a whaling ship to try my hand at whaling. But our captain has his own prey. We have been traveling the seas looking for the white whale, Moby Dick, who causes destruction wherever he swims. Will we survive a battle with the great whale? Find out in this stunning graphic novel adaptation of Herman Melville's classic by Rod Espinosa. Creator biographies and a glossary help reluctant readers take the first step on...

A masterpiece of storytelling, this epic saga pits Ahab, a brooding and fanatical sea captain, against the great white whale that crippled him. In telling the tale of Ahab's passion for revenge and the fateful voyage that ensued, Melville produced far more than the narrative of a hair-raising journey; Moby-Dick is a tale for the ages that sounds the deepest depths of the human soul. Interspersed with graphic sketches of life aboard a whaling vessel,...

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...

"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...