Herman Melville

• Apr-2009
• 

"Melville at his best invariably wrote from a sort of dream self, so that events which he relates as actual fact have indeed a far deeper reference to his own soul, his own inner life." - D.H. Lawrence. Here are ten stories that represent some of the...

• Mar-2008
• 

Israel Potter: His Fifty Years of Exile is a novel by Herman Melville published in installments in Putnam's Monthly Magazine from July 1854 through March 1855, in book form by George Palmer Putnam in New York in March 1855, and in a pirated edition b...

• 1851
• 

No American masterpiece casts quite as awesome a shadow as Melville's monumental Moby Dick. Mad Captain Ahab's quest for the White Whale is a timeless epic--a stirring tragedy of vengeance and obsession, a searing parable about humanity lost in a un...

Early American writer Herman Melville is best known for his great American novel "Moby Dick." However, Melville was also a prolific and honest short story writer. His stories play with irony, twisting the fates of his protagonists and making ...

This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available a...

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...

This collection of literature attempts to compile many of the classic, timeless works that have stood the test of time and offer them at a reduced, affordable price, in an attractive volume so that everyone can enjoy them....

Bannadonna is an eccentric artist and architect who dreams up plans for a magnificent bell tower. After receiving approval from the city, Bannadonna happily begins construction, but local citizens begin to notice strange occurrences associated with t...

Melville's controversial 1855 novella Benito Cereno follows sea captain Amasa Delano and his crew on the Bachelor's Delight as it is approached by another, rather battered-looking ship, the San Dominick. Upon boarding the San Dominick, Captain Delano...

In 1797, young Billy Budd is impressed into naval service. It is a perilous time for a British Royal Navy still reeling from mutinies and marauding French ships. When Billy is forcibly transferred to HMS Bellipotent, he evokes the wrath of John Clagg...

"Chowder" is Chapter fifteen from one of the greatest works of American literature, Herman Melville's Moby Dick. It is so beautifully written, so descriptive and colorful, one can virtually smell the fishy, salt air, picture the warm interior of the ...

Herman Melville (August 1, 1819 -- September 28, 1891) was an American novelist, writer of short stories, and poet from the American Renaissance period. The bulk of his writings was published between 1846 and 1857. Best known for his whaling novel ...

Herman Melville (1819-91) brought as much genius to the smaller-scale literary forms as he did to the full-blown novel: his poems and the short stories and novellas collected in this volume reveal a deftness and a delicacy of touch that is in some...

In Herman Melville's The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade , a group of steamboat passengers paddle to New Orleans on April Fool's Day. As the Mississippi carries them down river, everyone is selling something: quack remedies; stock in a mining company...

Best known as the creator of Captain Ahab and the great white whale of Moby-Dick, Herman Melville (1819 -- 91) found critical and popular success with his first novels, which he based on his adventures in the South Seas. His reputation was diminished...

Herman Melville (August 1, 1819 -- September 28, 1891) was an American novelist, writer of short stories, and poet from the American Renaissance period. The bulk of his writings was published between 1846 and 1857. Best known for his whaling novel ...

In those houses which are strictly double houses--that is, where the hall is in the middle--the fireplaces usually are on opposite sides; so that while one member of the household is warming himself at a fire built into a recess of the north wall, sa...

Sail to the exotic Galapagos Islands with Herman Melville, author of Moby-Dick. Let History and Legend, Fiction and Fact, Myth and Mystery swirl around you as you enter "The Encantadas," a unique island world stretching along our planet's Equator.

Herman Melville (August 1, 1819 -- September 28, 1891) was an American novelist, writer of short stories, and poet from the American Renaissance period. The bulk of his writings was published between 1846 and 1857. Best known for his whaling novel ...

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefo...

Presented as narratives of his own South Sea experiences, Melville's first two books had roused incredulity in many readers. Their disbelief, he declared, had been "the main inducement" in altering his plan for his third book, Mardi: and a Voyage Thi...

Melville's continuing adventures in the South Seas

Following the commercial and critical success of Typee, Herman Melville continued his series of South Sea adventure-romances with Omoo. Named after the Polynesian term for a rover, or someone who r...

A short story from the Classic Shorts collection: The Happy Failure by Herman Melville...

Don Benito faltered; then, like some somnambulist suddenly interfered with, vacantly stared at his visitor, and ended by looking down on the deck. He maintained this posture so long, that Captain Delano, almost equally disconcerted, and involuntarily...

Herman Melville (1819-1891), now at the center of the American literary canon, was wildly dismissed for this labyrinthine effort. With the Boston Post writing upon its release, "it might be supposed to emanate from a lunatic hospital rather than from...

Herman Melville (August 1, 1819 -- September 28, 1891) was an American novelist, writer of short stories, and poet from the American Renaissance period. The bulk of his writings was published between 1846 and 1857. Best known for his whaling novel ...

Redburn: His First Voyage is a novel by Herman Melville published on September 29, 1849, by Richard Bentley in London and on November 14, 1849, by Harper & Brothers in New York City. The author returned to the tone of his first novels, Typee (184...

From short masterpieces like "Bartleby the Scrivener" and "Billy Budd" to more obscure, even completely unknown works like the epic poem "Clarel," Melville's stories and poems rank among his greatest and most gripping work. This unique anthology -- t...

First published in 1846, this was American writer, Melville's first book partly based on his actual experiences as a captive on Nuku Hiva (which he spelled as Nukuheva) in the South Pacific Marquesas Islands....

This is a tale based on Melville's experiences aboard the USS United States from 1843 to 1844. It comments on the harsh and brutal realities of service in the US Navy at that time, but beyond this the narrator has created for the reader graphic symbo...