redburn  <p>drawn from melville's own adolescent experience aboard a merchant ship, <i>redburn</i> charts the coming-of-age of wellingborough redburn, a young innocent who embarks on a crossing to liverpool together with a roguish crew. once in liverpool, redburn encounters the squalid conditions of the city and meets harry bolton, a bereft and damaged soul, who takes him on a tour of london that includes a scene of rococo decadence unlike anything else in melvilles fiction. <i>redburn</i> is not a document; it is a work of art by the unexpected genius of a sailor, herman melville.</p>