Onboard the Fidele, a steamboat floating down the Mississippi to New Orleans, a confidence man sets out to defraud his fellow passengers. In quick succession he assumes numerous guises - from a legless beggar and a worldly businessman to a collector for charitable causes and a 'cosmopolitan' gentleman, who simply swindles a barber out of the price of a shave. Making very little from his hoaxes, the pleasure of trickery seems an end in itself for this slippery conman. Is he the Devil? Is his chicanery merely intended to expose the mercenary concerns of those around him? Set on April Fool's...
Onboard the Fidele, a steamboat floating down the Mississippi to New Orleans, a confidence man sets out to defraud his fellow passengers. In quick suc...
Herman Melville's masterpiece, one of the greatest works of imagination in literary history Over a century and a half after its publication, Moby-Dick still stands as an indisputable literary classic. It is the story of an eerily compelling madman pursuing an unholy war against a creature as vast and dangerous and unknowable as the sea itself. But more than just a novel of adventure, more than an encyclopedia of whaling lore and legend, Moby-Dick is a haunting, mesmerizing, and important social commentary populated with several of the most unforgettable and enduring characters in...
Herman Melville's masterpiece, one of the greatest works of imagination in literary history Over a century and a half after its publication...
"Contemporary Reviews" includes nineteen commentaries onThe Confidence-Man, eight of them new to the Second Edition. Better understood today are the concerted attacks on Melville by, especially, Presbyterian, Congregationalist, and Methodist reviewers. A new section, "Biographical Overviews," embodies the transformation of knowledge about Melville's life that has occurred over the last three decades. This section provides a wide range of readings of Melville's life by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Dennis Marnon, and Hershel Parker, among others "Sources, Backgrounds, and Criticism" is...
"Contemporary Reviews" includes nineteen commentaries onThe Confidence-Man, eight of them new to the Second Edition. Better understood today ...
Herman Melville towers among American writers not only for his powerful novels, but also for the stirring novellas and short stories that flowed from his pen. Two of the most admired of these -- "Bartleby" and "Benito Cereno" -- first appeared as magazine pieces and were then published in 1856 as part of a collection of short stories entitled The Piazza Tales. "Bartleby" (also known as "Bartleby the Scrivener") is an intriguing moral allegory set in the business world of mid-19th-century New York. A strange, enigmatic man employed as a clerk in a legal office, Bartleby forces his employer...
Herman Melville towers among American writers not only for his powerful novels, but also for the stirring novellas and short stories that flowed from ...
No American masterpiece casts quite as awesome a shadow as Melville's monumental Moby Dick. Mad Captain Ahab's quest for the White Whale is a timeless epic--a stirring tragedy of vengeance and obsession, a searing parable about humanity lost in a universe of moral ambiguity. It is the greatest sea story ever told. Far ahead of its own time, Moby Dick was largely misunderstood and unappreciated by Melville's contemporaries. Today, however, it is indisputably a classic. As D.H. Lawrence wrote, Moby Dick -commands a stillness in the soul, an awe . . . It is] one of the...
No American masterpiece casts quite as awesome a shadow as Melville's monumental Moby Dick. Mad Captain Ahab's quest for the White Whale is a t...
Introduction by Elizabeth Hardwick Illustrations by Rockwell Kent First published in 1851, Herman Melville's masterpiece is, in Elizabeth Hardwick's words, -the greatest novel in American literature.- The saga of Captain Ahab and his monomaniacal pursuit of the white whale remains a peerless adventure story but one full of mythic grandeur, poetic majesty, and symbolic power. Filtered through the consciousness of the novel's narrator, Ishmael, Moby-Dick draws us into a universe full of fascinating characters and stories, from the noble cannibal Queequeg to the...
Introduction by Elizabeth Hardwick Illustrations by Rockwell Kent First published in 1851, Herman Melville's masterpiece is, ...
The library of America is dedicated to publishing America's best and most significant writing in handsome, enduring volumes, featuring authoritative texts. Hailed as the "finest-looking, longest-lasting editions ever made" (The New Republic), Library of America volumes make a fine gift for any occasion. Now, with exactly one hundred volumes to choose from, there is a perfect gift for everyone.
The library of America is dedicated to publishing America's best and most significant writing in handsome, enduring volumes, featuring authoritative t...
Enriched Classics offer readers accessible editions of great works of literature enhanced by helpful notes and commentary. Each book includes educational tools alongside the text, enabling students and readers alike to gain a deeper and more developed understanding of the writer and their work. Billy Budd, Sailor has been called the best short novel ever written. In his brilliantly condensed prose, Herman Melville fashions a legal parable in which reason and intellect prove incapable of preserving innocence in the face of evil. For all those who feel themselves threatened by a...
Enriched Classics offer readers accessible editions of great works of literature enhanced by helpful notes and commentary. Each book includes educatio...
With an Introduction and Notes by David Herd, Lecturer in English and American Literature at the University of Kent at Canterbury and co-editor of 'Poetry Review'.
Moby Dick is the story of Captain Ahab's quest to avenge the whale that 'reaped' his leg. The quest is an obsession and the novel is a diabolical study of how a man becomes a fanatic.
But it is also a hymn to democracy. Bent as the crew is on Ahab's appalling crusade, it is equally the image of a co-operative community at work: all hands dependent on all hands, each individual responsible...
With an Introduction and Notes by David Herd, Lecturer in English and American Literature at the University of Kent at Canterbury and co-ed...
