Billy Budd, Sailor

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The tales in this selection of Melville's shorter fiction are products of the strange and complex imagination that produced Moby-Dick. Written in prose nouveau riche in its verbal splendour, antiquarian in its delight, bible-echoed, allusive, elaborate', they have the same compelling and mysterious power, defying ultimate interpretation. The selection includes Bartleby, The Encantadas, Benito Cereno (recently dramatized by Robert Lowell) and one of Melville's supreme masterpieces, Billy Budd, Sailor. Harold Beaver's introduction and notes will aid the reader's understanding and enjoyment of one of the most allusive and book-haunted of all writers, 'now recognized as a giant among American men of letters', equal in his own sphere to the greatest of this European contemporaries. (back cover)