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Billy Budd and Other Stories
Not yet published
Expected 10 Mar 26Accused 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 nothing can prevent the force of judgment and eventual justice upon him.
354 pages, Paperback
Expected publication March 10, 2026
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185 people want to read
About the author
Herman Melville
2,418 books4,551 followersThere is more than one author with this name
Herman Melville was an American novelist, short story writer, and poet of the American Renaissance period. Among his best-known works are Moby-Dick (1851); Typee (1846), a romanticized account of his experiences in Polynesia; and Billy Budd, Sailor, a posthumously published novella. At the time of his death, Melville was no longer well known to the public, but the 1919 centennial of his birth was the starting point of a Melville revival. Moby-Dick eventually would be considered one of the great American novels.
Melville was born in New York City, the third child of a prosperous merchant whose death in 1832 left the family in dire financial straits. He took to sea in 1839 as a common sailor on a merchant ship and then on the whaler Acushnet, but he jumped ship in the Marquesas Islands. Typee, his first book, and its sequel, Omoo (1847), were travel-adventures based on his encounters with the peoples of the islands. Their success gave him the financial security to marry Elizabeth Shaw, the daughter of the Boston jurist Lemuel Shaw. Mardi (1849), a romance-adventure and his first book not based on his own experience, was not well received. Redburn (1849) and White-Jacket (1850), both tales based on his experience as a well-born young man at sea, were given respectable reviews, but did not sell well enough to support his expanding family.
Melville's growing literary ambition showed in Moby-Dick (1851), which took nearly a year and a half to write, but it did not find an audience, and critics scorned his psychological novel Pierre: or, The Ambiguities (1852). From 1853 to 1856, Melville published short fiction in magazines, including "Benito Cereno" and "Bartleby, the Scrivener". In 1857, he traveled to England, toured the Near East, and published his last work of prose, The Confidence-Man (1857). He moved to New York in 1863, eventually taking a position as a United States customs inspector.
From that point, Melville focused his creative powers on poetry. Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War (1866) was his poetic reflection on the moral questions of the American Civil War. In 1867, his eldest child Malcolm died at home from a self-inflicted gunshot. Melville's metaphysical epic Clarel: A Poem and Pilgrimage in the Holy Land was published in 1876. In 1886, his other son Stanwix died of apparent tuberculosis, and Melville retired. During his last years, he privately published two volumes of poetry, and left one volume unpublished. The novella Billy Budd was left unfinished at his death, but was published posthumously in 1924. Melville died from cardiovascular disease in 1891.
Herman Melville was an American novelist, short story writer, and poet of the American Renaissance period. Among his best-known works are Moby-Dick (1851); Typee (1846), a romanticized account of his experiences in Polynesia; and Billy Budd, Sailor, a posthumously published novella. At the time of his death, Melville was no longer well known to the public, but the 1919 centennial of his birth was the starting point of a Melville revival. Moby-Dick eventually would be considered one of the great American novels.
Melville was born in New York City, the third child of a prosperous merchant whose death in 1832 left the family in dire financial straits. He took to sea in 1839 as a common sailor on a merchant ship and then on the whaler Acushnet, but he jumped ship in the Marquesas Islands. Typee, his first book, and its sequel, Omoo (1847), were travel-adventures based on his encounters with the peoples of the islands. Their success gave him the financial security to marry Elizabeth Shaw, the daughter of the Boston jurist Lemuel Shaw. Mardi (1849), a romance-adventure and his first book not based on his own experience, was not well received. Redburn (1849) and White-Jacket (1850), both tales based on his experience as a well-born young man at sea, were given respectable reviews, but did not sell well enough to support his expanding family.
Melville's growing literary ambition showed in Moby-Dick (1851), which took nearly a year and a half to write, but it did not find an audience, and critics scorned his psychological novel Pierre: or, The Ambiguities (1852). From 1853 to 1856, Melville published short fiction in magazines, including "Benito Cereno" and "Bartleby, the Scrivener". In 1857, he traveled to England, toured the Near East, and published his last work of prose, The Confidence-Man (1857). He moved to New York in 1863, eventually taking a position as a United States customs inspector.
From that point, Melville focused his creative powers on poetry. Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War (1866) was his poetic reflection on the moral questions of the American Civil War. In 1867, his eldest child Malcolm died at home from a self-inflicted gunshot. Melville's metaphysical epic Clarel: A Poem and Pilgrimage in the Holy Land was published in 1876. In 1886, his other son Stanwix died of apparent tuberculosis, and Melville retired. During his last years, he privately published two volumes of poetry, and left one volume unpublished. The novella Billy Budd was left unfinished at his death, but was published posthumously in 1924. Melville died from cardiovascular disease in 1891.
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
January 1, 2017
Melville always gets to me. I can only speak for myself, but the pages will start slowly and then build to an all-consuming fire. No, don't disturb me when I have Melville in my hands, for god's sake! Don't talk to me, don't touch me, don't breathe on the book. For when I am reading Melville, I am in the South Seas, and all I can hear are the disgorged waves against the flapping sails.
These are four short masterpieces, ones which I have re-read to get a better feel for the 19th century and the age of clipper ships. The poetic prose just rolls away like whitecaps in the middle of the Pacific.
Book Season = Spring (book passage)
These are four short masterpieces, ones which I have re-read to get a better feel for the 19th century and the age of clipper ships. The poetic prose just rolls away like whitecaps in the middle of the Pacific.
Book Season = Spring (book passage)
November 9, 2008
I picked this volume up in a used bookstore on vacation in Georgetown, Colorado. It contains four novellas - Benito Cereno, Bartleby the Scrivener, The Encantadas, and Billy Budd.
I had read Bartleby and Billy Budd before back on the boat but was struck this time by Bartleby's existentialism - I didn't get that the first time I read it. I also read Billy Budd looking for the homoeroticism, but even squinting really hard it is subtle, especially after reading the 'sperm' chapter in Moby Dick, or Ishmael literally sleeping with Queequeg's tattooed arm around him. Melville didn't dance around what he was trying to say.
Benito was eye opening, a US captain happens upon a derelict slave ship that has been commandeered by the slaves. He is slow to pick up on the obvious but once he does he brutally helps the other Captain crush the slave revolt. An obvious parallel to Northern resistance to abolitionists in the lead up to the Civil War.
The Encantadas knocks a star off the collection, it is an odd collection of unrelated vignettes. Interesting that Melville visited The Encantadas (Enchanted Isles, also known as The Galapagos) about the same time as Darwin did. Darwin of course used his time there studying finches to gain the greatest human insight into our world to date. Melville saw a blasted volcanic hell hole. Existential outlooks aren't good for science, apparently.
I had read Bartleby and Billy Budd before back on the boat but was struck this time by Bartleby's existentialism - I didn't get that the first time I read it. I also read Billy Budd looking for the homoeroticism, but even squinting really hard it is subtle, especially after reading the 'sperm' chapter in Moby Dick, or Ishmael literally sleeping with Queequeg's tattooed arm around him. Melville didn't dance around what he was trying to say.
Benito was eye opening, a US captain happens upon a derelict slave ship that has been commandeered by the slaves. He is slow to pick up on the obvious but once he does he brutally helps the other Captain crush the slave revolt. An obvious parallel to Northern resistance to abolitionists in the lead up to the Civil War.
The Encantadas knocks a star off the collection, it is an odd collection of unrelated vignettes. Interesting that Melville visited The Encantadas (Enchanted Isles, also known as The Galapagos) about the same time as Darwin did. Darwin of course used his time there studying finches to gain the greatest human insight into our world to date. Melville saw a blasted volcanic hell hole. Existential outlooks aren't good for science, apparently.
April 16, 2014
Melville's got it bad. First his mom named him Herman. Then, after a few successful early novels, his later work was panned by the critics and he died poor. Moby Dick is now considered a masterpiece, perhaps THE Great American Novel, but it's not widely read today. School kids are assigned Tom Sawyer or Huck Finn instead, or maybe The Scarlet Letter. If the story of the great, white, whale is too intimidating, do what I did and read some of his short stories or novels instead. Bartelby the Scrivener is about an employee from hell and is laugh out loud funny in parts. The Encantadas, about the Galapagos, is eminently readable and seems more non fiction than fiction. Benito Cereno is creepy and suspenseful. Billy Budd was the most challenging of the four short novels but was still a page turner. Except for the first story, set in New York City's Financial District, these are salty and authentic tales of the sea. Melville brings to life a mariner past and his stories carry moral weight but are not as weighty as you might fear. Take the plunge.
May 24, 2023
Almost a century and a half before the Lonely Planet series made roaming outlandish locales a modern day norm and coming of age experience, Herman Melville, as a young man, signed on the whaling ship Acushnet in January 1841. This—of course—is well before a traveler could see the world with the security of a return ticket and a debit card that works in ATM’s worldwide. Melville’s voyage under a tyrannical captain led to his desertion on Polynesian islands. Later he found his way to Honolulu, then part of the Sandwich Islands, and back to the Eastern seaboard of the USA after signing on a Navy vessel as a deckhand.
Melville recalled and embellished his adventures in early novels, establishing himself as the proto-Beat or Ur-Beat voice of American literature. However, it was not until Moby-Dick that his prose style revealed a Modernist master craftsman. Unfortunately, the literary establishment was not ready to acknowledge Melville’s creation; he was reduced to writing short stories for periodicals, mostly Putnam’s, for a pittance; these works, later collected in his The Piazza Tales (1856), contain three stunning eternal literary masterpieces: Bartleby, The Scrivener, Benito Cereno, and—to a slightly lesser extent--The Encantadas remain enduring classics that have the essential elements of both modern and Modernist literature. Although now eclipsed by the majesty of Moby-Dick, The Encantadas could easily be viewed as a prose diversion that could well have functioned as chapters within his greatest achievement.
The Encantadas upon publication in Putnam’s, was genre undefinable. Travel literature before the age of travel, back when the original derivation of the word, from the French Travail still had held more meaning than jetting off somewhere for two weeks and complaining about the weather and tourists. It is also a scholarly work that uses other written accounts of those who had seen some of the Galapagos Islands firsthand. However, first and foremost, it is a short work that allows Melville to show off his reverence for Shakespearean prose. Do not be fooled, The Encantadas is a prose masterpiece, to be read—perhaps aloud—for the author’s love and his unique, experimental use of the English language.
The Encantadas or Galapagos Islands were, in Melville’s era, a remote, inhospitable outpost for renegades, deserters, hermits and other unfortunates. Whaling vessels made stop there to hunt turtles. While the savagery of the “hunt” and slaughter is not depicted, unlike Melville’s detailed depictions of whalers slaughtering the earth’s most majestic mammals, one gets the feeling that humans on these islands are mere interlopers and that the turtle population would eventually be endangered. The Encantadas or, Enchanted islands represents America’s greatest novelist at the absolute top of his game, both stylistically and thematically.
Melville recalled and embellished his adventures in early novels, establishing himself as the proto-Beat or Ur-Beat voice of American literature. However, it was not until Moby-Dick that his prose style revealed a Modernist master craftsman. Unfortunately, the literary establishment was not ready to acknowledge Melville’s creation; he was reduced to writing short stories for periodicals, mostly Putnam’s, for a pittance; these works, later collected in his The Piazza Tales (1856), contain three stunning eternal literary masterpieces: Bartleby, The Scrivener, Benito Cereno, and—to a slightly lesser extent--The Encantadas remain enduring classics that have the essential elements of both modern and Modernist literature. Although now eclipsed by the majesty of Moby-Dick, The Encantadas could easily be viewed as a prose diversion that could well have functioned as chapters within his greatest achievement.
The Encantadas upon publication in Putnam’s, was genre undefinable. Travel literature before the age of travel, back when the original derivation of the word, from the French Travail still had held more meaning than jetting off somewhere for two weeks and complaining about the weather and tourists. It is also a scholarly work that uses other written accounts of those who had seen some of the Galapagos Islands firsthand. However, first and foremost, it is a short work that allows Melville to show off his reverence for Shakespearean prose. Do not be fooled, The Encantadas is a prose masterpiece, to be read—perhaps aloud—for the author’s love and his unique, experimental use of the English language.
The Encantadas or Galapagos Islands were, in Melville’s era, a remote, inhospitable outpost for renegades, deserters, hermits and other unfortunates. Whaling vessels made stop there to hunt turtles. While the savagery of the “hunt” and slaughter is not depicted, unlike Melville’s detailed depictions of whalers slaughtering the earth’s most majestic mammals, one gets the feeling that humans on these islands are mere interlopers and that the turtle population would eventually be endangered. The Encantadas or, Enchanted islands represents America’s greatest novelist at the absolute top of his game, both stylistically and thematically.
June 17, 2025
If you want proof of genius, here it is. Herman Melville wrote the great American novel, MOBY DICK, the greatest novella, BILLY BUDD, and greatest shorty story, "Bartleby The Scrivener". (I am following E.M. Foster's dictum that anything longer than 50,000 words but not a full-blown novel is a novella, e.g., Saul Bellow's SEIZE THE DAY.) BILLY BUDD, found among Melville's effects in the 1920s, is an answer, however tentative, to the problem of evil pondered in MOBY DICK. BILLY is the Christ-figure doomed by injustice in an uncaring universe yet unwilling to change the outcome if it means tampering with fate. Ahab was wrong. "Bartleby The Scrivener" is an ode to noncomformity and gentle, quiet anarchism tat would make Thoreau proud.. Bartleby doesn't want to burn down the world, it's just that when it comes to obeying his boss, he "would prefer not to". Some readers rate another Melville short masterpiece,"Benito Cereno" higher than "Bartleby", but I find it's discussion of saved and damned aboard a slave ship too unconvincing. "The Encantadas" is what Gore Vidal one of Melville's "fish-stories" set in the South Pacific and could easily be omitted here without damage to Melville's reputation.
November 8, 2024
Billy Budd, Foretopman is a phenomenal tragedy - especially coming right after The Encantadas, which comes across as slightly more experimental, it's a reminder that Melville is at heart a storyteller, and a phenomenal one at that. It's hard to even consider Bartleby the Scrivener a tragedy in the traditional sense - we don't see the downfall of Bartleby as a traditional tragic hero, instead it feels moreso like the experience of encountering such a tragic hero long after their fall from grace. My favorite might still be Benito Cereno - describing it as eerie feels like an understatement.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
April 28, 2023
Some of the short stories were difficult to follow with a flow that was often interrupted, although others were transformative in time and enjoyable.
November 28, 2014
The introduction to this book, written by Raymond Weaver, who discovered Billy Budd after Melville died, is one of the best things I've read in a while. (Confession: I actually skipped out on Weaver's edit of Billy Budd and am going for the so-called authoritative version by Sealts. Maybe then I'll come back and read Weaver's version.)
The novellas are the most memorable things I've read all year, although it took some simmering before I could form a clear impression of them.
The novellas are the most memorable things I've read all year, although it took some simmering before I could form a clear impression of them.
September 9, 2011
Having written negatively about his whale story, this is a plug for two of my favorite American novellas: Bartleby the Scrivener and Billy Budd, both of which I found very moving. Billy Budd, particularly, is excellent for maintaining its Christian subtext in a manner which caused me to reflect about naive goodness and how we regard it.
December 7, 2011
Having read this, the shorter novels of Herman Melville, I'd like to single out Billy Budd, Foretopman as my favorite. Billy's poetic last moments in the hold before his execution opened up Melville's under appreciated later works for me, and perhaps my appreciation of poetic verse.
Want to read
September 11, 2010Included: Benito Cereno; Billy Budd, the Foretopman; Bartleby, the Scrivner; The Encantadas or Enchanted
May 15, 2011
The Encantadas is much better as a dish in a touristy Mexican restaurant. Otherwise everything in here is O-kay with me and certainly worth reading.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews