Redburn : His First Voyage - Softcover

Melville, Herman

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9781438290669: Redburn : His First Voyage

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1438290667 ISBN 13: 9781438290669

Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2009

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Redburn is a semi-autobiographical novel concerning the sufferings of a refined youth among coarse and brutal sailors and the seedier areas of Liverpool. This theme of a youth confronted by realities and evils for which he is unprepared-or incorrectly prepared by both family and American institutions-is a prominent one in Melville's works.
The novel displays some of the more experimental tendencies that made Moby-Dick so popular after Melville's death, and begins to incorporate much of the symbolism that separates his earlier work from later, denser novels such as Pierre. Melville also takes the opportunity in Redburn to make a number of social criticisms, perhaps most prominent among them both explicit and implicit attacks on the evils of drink.

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From the Inside Flap

Drawn from Melville's own adolescent experience aboard a merchant ship, "Redburn charts the coming-of-age of Wellingborough Redburn, a young innocent who embarks on a crossing to Liverpool together with a roguish crew. Once in Liverpool, Redburn encounters the squalid conditions of the city and meets Harry Bolton, a bereft and damaged soul, who takes him on a tour of London that includes a scene of rococo decadence unlike anything else in Melville's fiction. In her Introduction, Elizabeth Hardwick writes, ""Redburn is rich in masterful portraits--a gallery of wild colors, pretensions and falsehoods, fleeting associations of unexpected tenderness. . . . "Redburn is not a document; it is a work of art by the unexpected genius of a sailor, Herman Melville."
This Modern Library Paperback Classic is set from the text of the first American edition of 1849.

From the Back Cover

“Redburn, recalling the cruel memories of [Melville’s] youth, was the first bitter cry of his maturity. . . . The book has the wry humour of the grown man. . . . Redburn was a victory.” —Lewis Mumford

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