Herman Melville
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The Piazza Tales (1856) is a collection of short stories by American writer Herman Melville. Before publication, five of its six stories appeared in Putnam's Monthly during a period of productivity with which Melville sought to achieve popular success as a writer of literary fiction. After the failure of his novels Moby-Dick (1851) and Pierre: or, The Ambiguities (1852), Melville struggled to find a publisher who would accept his work, and contemporary...
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Pierre: or, The Ambiguities (1852) is a novel by American writer Herman Melville. Published the year after Moby-Dick-a critical and commercial failure-Pierre: or, The Ambiguities is a psychological novel in the tradition of Gothic fiction. Melville struggled to find a publisher who would pay him in advance for the book, and its appearance prompted widespread ridicule and condemnation in the press, with some critics claiming that Melville himself had...
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DigiCat Publishing presents to you this special edition of "I and My Chimney" by Herman Melville. DigiCat Publishing considers every written word to be a legacy of humankind. Every DigiCat book has been carefully reproduced for republishing in a new modern format. The books are available in print, as well as ebooks. DigiCat hopes you will treat this work with the acknowledgment and passion it deserves as a classic of world literature.
4) The Piazza
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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 almost as rude, turned suddenly from him, walking forward to accost one of the Spanish seamen for the desired information. But he had hardly gone five paces, when with a sort of eagerness Don Benito invited...
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The various prose sketches here reprinted were first published by Melville, some in Harper's and some in Putnam's magazines, during the years from 1850 to 1856. "Hawthorne and His Mosses," the only piece of criticism in this collection, is particularly interesting viewed in the light of Melville's friendship with Hawthorne while they were neighbors at Pittsfield, Massachusetts. The other sketches cover a variety of homely subjects treated by Melville...
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Herman Melville's Battle Pieces and Aspects of the War takes the form of seventy-two narrative poems that deal with the different events of the American Civil War. The poems, which survey the history of the conflict between the North and the South, are arranged in a chronological order and depict the behavior of the individuals in the opposing parties. Starting to write right after the end of the war, Melville enjoyed considerable first-hand experience...
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HarperCollins is proud to present its new range of best-loved, essential classics.
'Struck dead by an angel of God! Yet the angel must hang!'
It is the end of the eighteenth century, and the navy recruits the eponymous hero - the 'Handsome Sailor' - to its fleet. Accused of mutinous behaviour, Billy Budd is forced to defend himself, but his fearful, silent response soon gives way to a terrible act of violence. The consequences are disastrous, and...
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This edition includes a modern introduction and a list of suggested further reading.Although most people do not think of Herman Melville as a particularly funny writer, his "Bartleby, the Scrivener" and The Confidence Man have kept readers laughing for a century and a half.
"Bartleby" is a simultaneously accurate and absurd depiction of life in a Wall Street office in the middle of the nineteenth century. It is the gentle comedy of a boss' helpless...
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"Es lunes, aunque no importa –podría ser cualquier otro día laborable–. El abogado y propietario de la oficina, por el bien de todos, designa a cada uno de sus subalternos las tareas que hay que resolver. Tres sencillas palabras, pronunciadas por el último empleado contratado, harán que, desde esos despachos, el mundo comience a tambalearse.
Con su «preferiría no hacerlo», Bartleby deja perplejo a todo aquel incapaz de ver más allá de...
10) The Bell-Tower
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Considered to be the least characteristic of Melville's stories, somewhat resembling the work of Nathaniel Hawthorne and Edgar Allan Poe, "The Bell-Tower" is a dark literary work that explores, though never fully reveals, its central mystery. An eccentric artist and architect dreams up plans for a magnificent bell tower. After receiving approval from the city, he happily begins construction. When city residents begin to notice strange occurrences...
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Chosen for inclusion in William Evans Burton's Cyclopediae of Wit and Humor of 1857, with an illustration by Henry Louis Stephens, "The Lightning-Rod Man" was the one Melville tale to be available throughout his lifetime, thanks to reissues of this volume. More a parable than a character-driven story, The Lightning-rod man is a charlatan who tries to profit by selling fearful people lightning rods during thunderstorms. The narrator has a difficult...
12) The Encantadas
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"The Encantadas" (or Enchanted Isles), is a series of ten descriptive sketches, and a reminiscence from Melville's sailor days revealing the ecologically pristine Galápagos Islands as both enchanting and horrifying. Containing some of Melville's "most memorable prose", The Encantadas were a critical success at a time when Melville's fortunes were down. After publication, the New York Dispatch cited the chapters as universally considered among the...
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"Llamadme Ismael." Muy pocos personajes literarios hay hoy tan conocidos como la ballena blanca, o Ismael o el capitán Ajab, y probablemente no haya un inicio de novela tan famoso como el de Moby-Dick. Concebida por Herman Melville como respuesta norteamericana a la gran literatura europea de finales del siglo XVIII y principios del XIX, Moby-Dick recoge la tradición romántica y gótica dando forma a un épico poema que ha llegado a ocupar en Estados...
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In this spirited saga, a promising young soldier is wounded at the battle of Bunker Hill, sets sail with John Paul Jones, and undertakes espionage at the behest of Benjamin Franklin. Herman Melville drew upon the obscure memoirs of a Revolutionary War veteran to create his only historical novel, combining Israel Potter's real-life reminiscences with fictional incidents that lead his hero into encounters with noteworthy figures of colonial America....
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Typee is the first book by American writer Herman Melville, published in the early part of 1846, when Melville was 26 years old. Considered a classic in travel and adventure literature, the narrative is based on the author's actual experiences on the island Nuku Hiva in the South Pacific Marquesas Islands in 1842, supplemented with imaginative reconstruction and research from other books. The title comes from the valley of Taipivai, once known as...
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Moby Dick is one of the greatest American novels ever wrote. If you've always wanted to read the classic, but just don't have the time, this abridged version can help. At just 20,000 words long, this version of the classic novel will let you read Melville's classic in just hours, and provide you with an excellent overview of the entire novel.
The story tells the adventures of the wandering sailor Ishmael, and his voyage on the whaleship Pequod,...
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Herman Melville, du haut de ses vingt-cinq ans, nous raconte la rencontre avec un peuple étonnant du Pacifique
Nuku-Hiva, une île de l'archipel des Marquises, Pacifique. Deux tribus y vivent, l'une douce et pacifique, l'autre cannibale. Après avoir fui le navire baleinier, deux fugitifs sont recueillis par l'une des tribus. Taïpi est la relation d'une aventure qu'a connue Herman Melville avec l'un de ses coéquipiers après une campagne éprouvante...
19) The Two Temples
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Here are ten stories that represent some of the best short work of American master Herman Melville, including "Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall-Street," "The Happy Failure," and "The Paradise of Bachelors and The Tartarus of Maids." Alongside THE HAPPY FAILURE, Harper Perennial will publish the short fiction of Fyodor Dostoevsky, Leo Tolstoy, Willa Cather, Stephen Crane, and Oscar Wilde to be packaged in a beautifully designed, boldly colorful...
20) The Fiddler
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A short story from the Classic Shorts collection: The Happy Failure by Herman Melville.