billy budd sailor and other stories herman melville

Though Melville had been working on the novella Billy Budd, Sailor for the last five years of his life, it appears that he may not have finished it when he died in 1891. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.While “Bartleby, the Scrivener” and Moby-Dick get a lot of attention (and are taught frequently in high school and college classes), fans of Herman Melville’s work think a lot about a piece he was writing at the end of his life.

All show Melville a master of irony, point-of-view, and tone whose fables ripple out in nearly endless circles of meaning.ĪBOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Several of the tales - Bartleby the Scrivener, Benito Cereno, The Encantadas, The Paradise of Bachelors and the Tartarus of Maids - are acknowledged masterpieces of their genres. The eight shorter tales included here were composed during Melville's years as a magazine writer in the mid 1850's and establish him, along with Hawthorne and Poe, as the greatest American story writer of his age. The selection in this volume represents the best of Melville's shorter fiction, and uses the most authoritative texts. The passion it has aroused in its readers over the years is a measure of how deeply it addresses some of the fundamental questions of experience that every age must reexamine for itself. Outwardly a compelling narrative of events aboard a British man-of-war during the turmoil of the Napoleonic Wars, Billy Budd, Sailor is a nautical recasting of the Fall, a parable of good and evil, a meditation on justice and political governance, and a searching portrait of three extraordinary men. Grant Watson writes, `In this short history of the impressment and hanging of a handsome sailor-boy are to be discovered problems as profound as those which puzzle us in the pages of the Gospels.' `Truth uncompromisingly told will always have its ragged edges.' So wrote Melville of Billy Budd, Sailor, among the greatest of his works and, in its richness and ambiguity, among the most problematic. Oxford Research Encyclopedias: Global Public Health.

The European Society of Cardiology Series.Oxford Commentaries on International Law.

Billy budd sailor and other stories herman melville