Herman Melville
Author
Publisher
Project Gutenberg
Language
English
Description
An aging lawyer hires a new copyist to help with his firm's workload, and at first he finds himself pleased with his new employee. Bartleby is quiet, efficient and he doesn't display any of the loud eccentricities of the firm's other two copyists, Nippers and Turkey. But one day, when the lawyer asks Bartleby if he will help him compare copies, Bartleby simply replies, "I would prefer not to." As time goes by and Bartleby's strange refusals multiply,...
Author
Publisher
Project Gutenberg
Language
English
Description
Widely believed to be among Melville's most popular works, "Redburn, His First Voyage" follows the young Wellingborough Redburn on his first journey at sea. A boy just on the verge of manhood, Redburn's decision to become a sailor is apparently at odds with his gentle upbringing, which has made him in many ways unprepared for the hardships of his chosen profession. He is unmercifully initiated into the life of a sailor by his fellow crewmen, a trying...
Author
Publisher
Penguin Random House Audio
Pub. Date
2020
Language
Español
Description
"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...
4) Typee
Author
Publisher
Project Gutenberg
Language
English
Description
Based on Melville's real-life experiences after having jumped ship in the Marquesas Islands, his first novel was extremely popular, provoking public skepticism until the events within were corroborated by a fellow castaway. Typee is properly considered a work of fiction, as the three week stay on which the author based his story is here extended to four months, and the book is supplemented with imaginative reconstruction and adaptation of material...
Author
Publisher
HarperCollins
Pub. Date
2009
Language
English
Formats
Description
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 sure that the reader is left with a deep sense of wonder and enlightenment. Many of his works are set from an "outsider's" perspective of immigrants in early America, which is interesting considering that Melville...
Author
Publisher
The Floating Press
Language
English
Description
Omoo: A Narrative of the South Seas is the sequel to Melville's Typee, both fictional yet highly autobiographical. The narrator ships on a whaling vessel to Tahiti, where the crew mutinies and are imprisoned. The narrative is full of his observations of the Tahitian customs and way of life. Omoo is based on Melville's experiences in the Society Islands.
7) Billy Budd
Author
Publisher
Naxos AudioBooks
Language
English
Description
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 Claggart, the ship's Master-at-arms. Claggart falsely accuses Billy of conspiracy to mutiny, a charge that will have a profound effect on the fates of both seamen.
Author
Series
Publisher
Dreamscape Media
Pub. Date
2018
Language
English
Description
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...
Author
Publisher
Naxos AudioBooks
Pub. Date
2006
Language
English
Description
Melville’s ‘Bartleby’ is a classic American short story, a strange tale of an assiduous copyist whose catch-phrase is ‘I would prefer not to.’ It is joined here by two other stories from The Piazza Tales, Melville’s idiosyncratic collection: ‘The Lightning-Rod Man’ and ‘The Bell Tower’.
Author
Publisher
Project Gutenberg
Language
English
Description
The Confidence Man (1857) is a novel by American writer Herman Melville. 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. When it was published, The Confidence Man was seen as a flawed, unnecessarily complicated novel, and beyond several collections of poetry, it all but ended Melville's career as a professional writer. When Melville's work was...