The gripping tale of a handsome and charismatic young sailor who runs afoul of his ship's master-at-arms, is falsely accused of inciting a mutiny, and hung, Billy Budd, Sailor is often treated as a masterpiece, a canonical work. But that assessment is at least partly founded on the assumption that the story was complete and ready for publication when it was left among the manuscripts on Melville's writing desk when he died in 1891. As Hershel Parker has pointed out, "It is a wonderfully teachable story--as long as it is not taught as a finished, complete, coherent, and totally...

This classic story of high adventure, manic obsession and metaphysical speculation was Melville's masterpiece. This edition includes passages from Melville's correspondence with Nathaniel Hawthorne, in which the two discuss the philosophical depths of the novel's plot and imagery.
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-It's true. It's all true for Moby-Dick. He's a killer, he's a fury, he's an angel of hell. Why if the white whale could talk he'd talk like Ahab.-
Nantucket. 1851. Center of a whaling industry that transformed blubber into the oils and candles that lit the world. It's there that a schoolmaster called Ishmael arrives to ship on a whale-boat. He enrolls under Ahab, Captain of the Pequod - a man bent on destroying the white whale that lost him his leg. Certain the destruction of his nemesis will slake his thirst; Ahab's single-minded pursuit of Moby-Dick consumes Ishmael, the crew...

This volume, published by Melville Press in conjunction with his historical museum in the Berkshires, MA, is the first time all of these short works have appeared in a separate dedicated volume. They reflect a softer side to Herman Melville. In 1890, aged 71, Herman Melville was secretly writing what would become his greatest book, BILLY BUDD, SAILOR. Not even his wife knew about this work. At the same time he was writing a collection sweet, sentimental nature poems as a gift for her; it would be his parting gift as he died before they could be published. His poems about Arrowhead and the...