Billy Budd, Sailor
Subtitle: and Selected Tales
By: Herman Melville ; edited with an introduction and notes by Robert Milder.
Contributors: Milder, Robert.
Edition: Reissued (2)
Series: Oxford World's Classics
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 1998
Place of publication: Oxford, England
Language: eng
Format: Paperback
Number of pages: 410
ISBN-13: 9780192839039
Copyright date: 1962
Subjects: Executions and executioners -- Fiction; Ship captains -- Fiction; Impressment -- Fiction; Sailors -- Fiction
Genres: Fiction.
Description: 'Truth uncompromisingly told will always have its ragged edges.'

So wrote Melville of Billy Budd, Sailor, among the most problematic. Outwardly a compelling narrative of events aboard a British man-of-war during 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 the three extraordinary men.

The eight shorter tales included here establish Melville, with Hawthorne and Poe, as the greatest American story writer of hi age. Several of the tales - 'Bartleby the Scrivener', 'Benito Cereno', 'the Encantadas', and 'The Paradise of Bachelors and the Tartarus of Maids' - are acknowledged masterpieces. All show Melville a master of irony, point-of-view, and tone whose fables ripple out in ever-increasing circles of meaning.

The texts of all the stories are reprinted from the most authoritative recent editions. This edition also includes the original source for 'Benito Cereno'.
(back cover)
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [xlii]-xliv).
Table of contents: title: Bartleby, the scrivener; title: Cock-a-doodle-doo!; title: The fiddler; title: The paradise of bachelors and the tartarus of maids; title: The lightning-rod man; title: The Encantadas, or, Enchanted Isles; title: Benito Cereno; title: I and my chimney; title: Billy Budd, sailor (an inside narrative).