Herman Melville

An American masterpiece, Moby-Dick takes you on an epic voyage aboard the Pequod, where Captain Ahab's obsession with the whale named "Moby Dick" drives the crew and his ship further and further into a spiral of madness. Considered a classic today, Moby-Dick was not as appreciated during Melville's lifetime, where it even went out of print for many decades. Not until Melville's 100 year anniversary of his birth year did a revival into his work bring Moby-Dick back into the forefront of American Literature.

The text here is based on Hershel Parker and Harrison Hayford’s 1967 edition, footnoted to include biographical discoveries. Reviews, letters by Melville and belated praise is collected, and a wealth of new biographical material has been added, while new research is highlighted. Parker also explores what writing Moby-Dick cost Melville and his family.

Moby-Dick, one of the Great American Novels and a treasure of world literature, follows the adventures of wandering sailor Ishmael, and Captain Ahab who seeks out Moby Dick, a ferocious, enigmatic white sperm whale. In a previous encounter, the whale destroyed Ahab's boat and bit off his leg, which now drives Ahab to take revenge.

Typee is a fast-moving adventure tale, an autobiographical account of the author's Polynesian stay, an examination of the nature of good and evil, and a frank exploration of sensuality and exotic ritual. Includes vintage illustration

Moby Dick is the 1851 novel by Herman Melville describing the voyage of the whaling ship Pequod commanded by Captain Ahab who leads his crew on a hunt for the great whale, Moby-Dick. The narrator's reflections, along with complex descriptions of the grueling work of whaling and the personalities of his shipmates, are woven into a profound meditation on society, nature, and the human struggle for meaning, happiness, and salvation. Moby Dick is often considered the epitome of American Romanticism. The novel frequently employs Shakespearean devices, including formal stage directions and extended soliloquies and asides. The first line of Chapter One -"Call me Ishmael."- is one of the most famous in American literature. Moby-Dick is considered to be one of the greatest novels in the English language.

This volume, first published in 1856, includes three of the tales widely considered to be among Melville’s masterpieces. In ‘Bartleby, the Scrivener’, a Wall Street lawyer hires a melancholy young clerk called Bartleby, whose sudden and mysterious refusal to work plunges the firm into disarray. ‘Benito Cereno’ is the account of a mutiny on a slave ship, based on the real-life journals of an American sea captain. ‘The Encantadas, or Enchanted Isles’ is a series of sketches about the Galápagos Islands which was a huge success with the reading public and contains some of Melville’s most celebrated prose. Also included in this volume are ‘The Lightning-Rod Man’, ‘The Bell Tower’ and a story written especially for the collection, ‘The Piazza’. Taken together, these tales, in their masterful use of irony and concision, display the author of Moby Dick at his most uncompromising and compelling.

Typee, a Romance of the South Sea was Herman Melville's first book. It is an idyll of four months among primitive South Sea islanders. It won him great fame during his life. Melville always mixes his own extraordinary personal experiences with later research to produce powerful and imaginative works. TYPEE shocked its original audience with a truthful account of Polynesian tribal life. It also defined the author: caught in its glare like a fly in amber, he stands frozen before the exotic, sharply focused on it, yet forced to remain forever alien. "A vivid picture of a civilized man in contact with the exotic dream-like life of the tropics."

Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall-Street by Herman Melville. "Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street" is a short story by the American writer Herman Melville, first serialized anonymously in two parts in the November and December 1853 issues of Putnam's Magazine, and reprinted with minor textual alterations in his The Piazza Tales in 1856. The narrator, an elderly, unnamed Manhattan lawyer with a comfortable business, already employs two scriveners, Nippers and Turkey to copy legal documents by hand. An increase in business leads him to advertise for a third, and he hires the forlorn-looking Bartleby in the hope that his calmness will soothe the irascible temperaments of the other two. An office boy called Ginger Nut completes the staff. At first, Bartleby produces a large volume of high-quality work, but one day, when asked to help proofread a document, Bartleby answers with what soon becomes his perpetual response to every request: "I would prefer not to". To the dismay of the lawyer and the irritation of the other employees, Bartleby performs fewer and fewer tasks and eventually none, instead spending long periods of time staring out one of the office's windows at a brick wall. The narrator makes several futile attempts to reason with Bartleby and to learn something about him; when the narrator stops by the office one Sunday morning, he discovers that Bartleby has started living there.

"Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street" is a short story by the American writer Herman Melville, first serialized anonymously in two parts in the November and December 1853 issues of Putnam's Magazine, and reprinted with minor textual alterations in his The Piazza Tales in 1856. In the story, a Wall Street lawyer hires a new clerk who, after an initial bout of hard work, refuses to make copy or do any other task required of him, with the words "I would prefer not to". The lawyer cannot bring himself to remove Bartleby from his premises, and decides instead to move his office, but the new proprietor removes Bartleby to prison, where he perishes. Numerous critical essays have been published on the story, which scholar Robert Milder describes as "unquestionably the masterpiece of the short fiction" in the Melville canon

Redburn Volume 2 By Herman Melville Wellington Redburn is a fifteen-year-old from the state of New York, with only one dream - to run away to sea. However, when he does fulfil this long-held fantasy, he quickly finds that reality as a cabin boy is far harsher than he ever imagined. Mocked by the crew on board the Highlander for his weakness and bullied by the vicious and merciless sailor Jackson, Wellington must struggle to endure the long journey from New York to Liverpool. But when he does reach England, he is equally horrified by what he finds there: poverty, desperation and moral corruption. Inspired by Melville's own youthful experiences on board a cargo boat, this is a compelling tale of innocence transformed, through bitter experience, into disillusionment. A fascinating sea journal and coming-of-age tale, Redburn provides a unique insight into the mind of one of America's greatest novelists. We are delighted to publish this classic book as part of our extensive Classic Library collection. Many of the books in our collection have been out of print for decades, and therefore have not been accessible to the general public. The aim of our publishing program is to facilitate rapid access to this vast reservoir of literature, and our view is that this is a significant literary work, which deserves to be brought back into print after many decades. The contents of the vast majority of titles in the Classic Library have been scanned from the original works. To ensure a high quality product, each title has been meticulously hand curated by our staff. Our philosophy has been guided by a desire to provide the reader with a book that is as close as possible to ownership of the original work. We hope that you will enjoy this wonderful classic work, and that for you it becomes an enriching experience.

Rare edition with unique illustrations and elegant classic cream paper. On a previous voyage, a mysterious white whale had ripped off the leg of a sea captain named Ahab. Now the crew of the Pequod, on a pursuit that features constant adventure and horrendous mishaps, must follow the mad Ahab into the abyss to satisfy his unslakeable thirst for vengeance. Narrated by the cunningly observant crew member Ishmael, Moby-Dick is the tale of the hunt for the elusive, omnipotent, and ultimately mystifying white whale-Moby Dick. On its surface, Moby-Dick is a vivid documentary of life aboard a nineteenth-century whaler, a virtual encyclopedia of whales and whaling, replete with facts, legends, and trivia that Melville had gleaned from personal experience and scores of sources. But as the quest for the whale becomes increasingly perilous, the tale works on allegorical levels, likening the whale to human greed, moral consequence, good, evil, and life itself. Who is good? The great white whale who, like Nature, asks nothing but to be left in peace? Or the bold Ahab who, like scientists, explorers, and philosophers, fearlessly probes the mysteries of the universe? Who is evil? The ferocious, man-killing sea monster? Or the revenge-obsessed madman who ignores his own better nature in his quest to kill the beast? Scorned by critics upon its publication, Moby-Dick was publicly derided during its author's lifetime. Yet Melville's masterpiece has outlived its initial misunderstanding to become an American classic of unquestionably epic proportions. Includes unique illustrations

Rare edition with unique illustrations and elegant classic cream paper. On a previous voyage, a mysterious white whale had ripped off the leg of a sea captain named Ahab. Now the crew of the Pequod, on a pursuit that features constant adventure and horrendous mishaps, must follow the mad Ahab into the abyss to satisfy his unslakeable thirst for vengeance. Narrated by the cunningly observant crew member Ishmael, Moby-Dick is the tale of the hunt for the elusive, omnipotent, and ultimately mystifying white whale-Moby Dick. On its surface, Moby-Dick is a vivid documentary of life aboard a nineteenth-century whaler, a virtual encyclopedia of whales and whaling, replete with facts, legends, and trivia that Melville had gleaned from personal experience and scores of sources. But as the quest for the whale becomes increasingly perilous, the tale works on allegorical levels, likening the whale to human greed, moral consequence, good, evil, and life itself. Who is good? The great white whale who, like Nature, asks nothing but to be left in peace? Or the bold Ahab who, like scientists, explorers, and philosophers, fearlessly probes the mysteries of the universe? Who is evil? The ferocious, man-killing sea monster? Or the revenge-obsessed madman who ignores his own better nature in his quest to kill the beast? Scorned by critics upon its publication, Moby-Dick was publicly derided during its author's lifetime. Yet Melville's masterpiece has outlived its initial misunderstanding to become an American classic of unquestionably epic proportions. Includes unique illustrations

Over a century and a half after its publication, Moby-Dick still stands as an indisputable literary classic. This novel describes the ill-fated voyage of the whaling ship Pequod to find and destroy the eponymous white whale, driven by the obsessive Captain Ahab. A masterpiece of storytelling and symbolic realism, this thrilling adventure and epic saga pits Ahab, a brooding sea captain, against the great white whale that crippled him. Moby-Dick is often considered the epitome of American Romanticism. There is a wisdom that is woe; but there is a woe that is madness. And there is a Catskill eagle in some souls that can alike dive down into the blackest gorges, and soar out of them again and become invisible in the sunny spaces. And even if he for ever flies within the gorge, that gorge is in the mountains; so that even in his lowest swoop the mountain eagle is still higher than other birds upon the plain, even though they soar.

THE term "suburban" has always seemed to me to have a peculiarly English meaning. It suggests images that are not apt to present themselves in America. American cities have suburbs; but they have to a very limited extent what may be called suburban scenery. The essence of suburban scenery in the western world is to be straggling, shabby, inexpensive; to consist of rail fences and loose planks, vacant, dusty lots in which carpet-beating goes forward, Irish cabins, lumber yards, and rudely bedaubed advertisements of quack medicines. The peculiar function of the neighbourhood of most foreign towns, on the other hand, is to be verdant and residential, thickly inhabited, and replete with devices for making habitation agreeable. Some of the prettiest things in England and France are to be found in the immediate vicinity of the capitals of those countries. There is nothing more charming in Europe than the great terrace at Saint Germain; there are few things so picturesque as Richmond bridge and the view thence along either bank of the Thames.

Included in this Herman Melville collection are six tales that range considerably -- from "The Encantadas" (an allegorical travelogue) to the haunting "Bartleby, the Scrivener." Opening the volume is "The Piazza," a pastoral sketch that frames the collection. "Benito Cereno" -- a subversive satire -- of grows out of a true story of mutiny among the enslaved . . .

One of Melville's most popular novels, White-Jacket is both a brisk sea adventure and a powerful social critique, which also contains some of Melville's best black humor (particularly the hilarious Surgeon of the Fleet episode). In 1843, after three years of voyaging in the South Seas, Melville signed up as an ordinary seaman on the man-of-war United States, and headed for home. What he observed on that trip formed the basis of White-Jacket, a success both as a story and as an expose of certain naval practices of which the public was only dimly aware. Because the publisher Harper & Bros. made sure the book got into the hands of every member of Congress, White-Jacket was instrumental in abolishing flogging in the U. S. Navy forever. We are delighted to publish this classic book as part of our extensive Classic Library collection. Many of the books in our collection have been out of print for decades, and therefore have not been accessible to the general public. The aim of our publishing program is to facilitate rapid access to this vast reservoir of literature, and our view is that this is a significant literary work, which deserves to be brought back into print after many decades. The contents of the vast majority of titles in the Classic Library have been scanned from the original works. To ensure a high quality product, each title has been meticulously hand curated by our staff. Our philosophy has been guided by a desire to provide the reader with a book that is as close as possible to ownership of the original work. We hope that you will enjoy this wonderful classic work, and that for you it becomes an enriching experience

The critically acclaimed author of that behemoth of nineteenth-century fiction, Moby-Dick, Herman Melville was also an accomplished short story writer whom critics say did much to advance the form. The Piazza Tales collects many of Melville's best-known short works, including "Bartleby the Scrivener" and "Benito Cereno."