Herman Melville
2) Billy Budd
Academics hail it as the beginning of modernism, but to readers around the world—even those daunted by Moby-Dick—Bartleby the Scrivener is simply one of the most absorbing and moving novellas ever. Set in the mid-19th century on New York City’s Wall Street, it was also, perhaps, Herman Melville's most prescient story: What if...
5) The Piazza
Typee is a fictional, but heavily autobiographical book by Herman Melville. Based on his own three weeks as a captive on Nuku Hiva, Melville's protagonist spends four months trapped on the island. Melville also fleshed out the story with details provided by contemporary explorers. The book was his most popular during his lifetime and provided significant groundwork for later tales of European and Pacific cultures meeting.
7) Moby Dick
8) Moby Dick
It was an obsession that would destroy them all...
On a cold December night, a young man called Ishmael rents a room at an inn in Massachusetts. He has come from Manhattan to the north-east of America to sign up for a whaling expedition.
Later that same night, as Ishmael is sleeping, a heavily tattooed man wielding a blade enters his room. This chance meeting is just the start of what will become the greatest adventure of his life.
The next
...Long before penning Moby-Dick, which many regard as the quintessential American novel, author Herman Melville was captivated by life on the open sea. White Jacket adopts a different perspective, focusing on the brutal treatment that many sailors received at the hands of their superiors. In particular, it has been noted that this novel proved to be instrumental in banning the practice of flogging in several branches of the U.S. military.
...Includes "Bartleby, the Scrivener", "Benito Cereno" and "The Lightning-Rod Man"
A lawyer hires a new copyist, only to be met with stubborn, confounding resistance. A nameless guide discovers hidden worlds of luxury and bleak exploitation. After boarding a beleaguered Spanish slave ship, an American trader's cheerful...
Best known today for his novels and stories, the author of Moby-Dick was a devoted and accomplished poet. Ranging from Civil War battlefields to the haunted byways of the Holy Land, from close observation of nature to deep philosophical mediation, Melville's poetry was central to his life and art and he justly...