Complete Shorter Fiction by Herman Melville

Complete Shorter Fiction by Herman Melville

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 ways even more impressive than the massive, tectonic passions of Moby-Dick. In a story like “Bartleby, the Scrivener” — one of the very few perfect representatives of the form in the English language — he displayed an unflinching precision and insight and empathy in his depiction of the drastically alienated inner life of the title character. In “Benito Cereno,” he addressed the great racial dilemmas of the nineteenth century with a profound, almost surreal imaginative clarity. And in Billy, Budd, Sailor, the masterpiece of his last years, he fused the knowledge and craft gained from a lifetime’s magnificent work into a pure, stark, flawlessly composed tale of innocence betrayed and destroyed. Melville is justly honored for the epic sweep of his mind, but his lyricism, his skill in rendering the minute, the particular, the local, was equally sublime. SEE LESS

Herman Melville was an American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and poet. His first two books gained much attention, though they were not bestsellers, and his popularity declined precipitously only a few years later. By the time of his death he had been almost completely forgotten, but his longest novel, Moby Dick — largely considered a failure during his lifetime, and most responsible for Melville's fall from favour with the reading public — was rediscovered in the 20th century as one of the chief literary masterpieces of both American and world literature.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9781857152326
ISBN 10	1857152328
Title	Complete Shorter Fiction
Author	Herman Melville
Series	Everyman's Library Classics
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Hardback
Publisher	Everyman
Year published	1997-04-24
Number of pages	478
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
Note	Unavailable