Billy Budd, Sailor - Softcover

Melville, Herman

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0451508130 ISBN 13: 9780451508133

Publisher: Signet Classics, 1961

Synopsis

Herman Melville's final masterpiece, found unpublished on his desk at his death.

Billy Budd, Sailor would emerge, after its publication in 1924, as one of Melville's best-loved books--and one of his most open, with its discussion of homosexualty.

In it, Melville returns to the sea to tell the story of Billy, a cheerful, hard working, and handsome young sailor, conscripted to work against his will on another ship, where he soon finds himself persecuted by Claggart, the paranoid master-at-arms. As things escalate beyond the naive Billy's control, tragedy looms on the horizon like Melville's great white whale, and the story become Melville's final, sublime plunge into the classic tussle between civilization and chaos, between oppression and freedom, as well as the book in which he discusses homosexuality most openly.

One of the major works of American literature.

About this title

About the Author

Herman Melville was born in New York City in 1819. At eighteen, he set sail on a whaler, and upon his return, wrote a series of bestselling adventure novels based on his travels, including Typee and Omoo, which made him famous. Starting with Moby-Dick in 1851, however, his increasingly complex and challenging work drew more and more negative criticism, until 1857 when, after his collection Piazza Tales (which included "Bartleby the Scrivener"), and the novel The Confidence Man, Melville stopped publishing fiction. He drifted into obscurity, writing poetry and working for the Customs House in New York City, until his death in 1891.

From AudioFile

[Editor's Note: The following is a combined review with DEAD AIR and THE LION, THE WITCH AND THE WARDROBE.]--American religious organizations have long embraced radio drama as a vehicle for their messages. Now comes Focus on the Family, syndicating a variety of plays to religious stations on the low end of the FM dial, and now offering them on CD. Produced overseas, these are professional handsome offerings, with didacticism nearly invisible. Father Gilbert, a Scotland Yard detective turned Anglican minister, fights crime like any other shamus, only his perpetrators lurk in the bowels of hell. In DEAD AIR, while appearing on a "chat show," Gilbert receives a chilling phone call that appears connected to a set of murders. It turns out that he is the intended victim, his soul coveted by demons. It's a bit like PBS's "Mystery" series with a soupçon of FAUST. THE LION, THE WITCH AND THE WARDROBE and BILLY BUDD are faithful and endearing versions of C.S. Lewis and Melville, respectively. The former, first published in 1950, derives from Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia, a series of sophisticated children's allegorical fantasies set in the mythical kingdom of Narnia. The author was a scholar as well as a writer and religious apologist. The latter presents the often dramatized allegory of good, evil, and self-sacrifice on the high seas of human destiny. Y.R. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2002, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine

About this edition

• Publisher: Signet Classics
• Publication date: 1961
• ISBN 10: 0451508130
• ISBN 13: 9780451508133
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback