Selected Tales and Poems

by Herman Melville

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TALES
Benito Cereno
Bartleby the Scrivener
J
immy Rose
The Fiddler
The Lightning-Rod Man
I and My Chimney
The Bell-Tower
The Paradise of Bachelors and the Tartarus of Maids
The Encantadas
Billy Budd
POEMS OF THE CIVIL WAR
The Portent
Misgivings
The Conflict of Convictions
The March into Virginia
Duponi's Round Fight
A Utilitarian View of the Monitor's Fight
Malvern Hill
Sheridan at Cedar Creek
In the Prison Pen
The College Colonel
The Eagle of the Blue
"The Coming Storm"
On the Slain Collegians
The House-Top
The Apparition (A Retrospect)
On the Photograph of a Corps Commander
Shiloh
A Canticle
OTHER POEMS
The Aeolian Harp
The Berg
The Maldive Shark
In a Bye-Canal
Madam Mirror
Fragments of a Lost Gnostic Poem of the 12th Century
Lone Founts
To Ned
Monody
After the Pleasure Party
Immolated
In a Garret
The Attic Landscape
Creek Architecture
The Apparition (The Parthenon uplifted on its rock first
challenging the view on the approach to Athens)
The Age of the Antonines
The Ravaged Villa
The Blue-Bird
The New Rosicrucians
The Lake

Genres: Poetry, Fiction, Short Stories, Classics, Collections

417 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1924

About the author

There 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.

Reviews

[Jackson · Rating 2 out of 5]

Dazzling little guys in here - most are forgettable , but then again what else is a day out at sea like but forgettable.

The Encantadas make isle hermit life far more appealing than the downtown faux-hipster lifestyle.

[Kyle K]

Tales:
Benito Cereno -

Bartleby the Scrivener -

Jimmy Rose -

The Fiddler -

The Lightning-Rod Man -

I and My Chimney -

The Bell Tower -

The Paradise of Bachelors and the Tartarus of Maids -

The Encantadas -

Billy Budd -

Poems of the Civil War:
The Portent -

Misgivings -

The Conflict of Convictions -

The March into Virginia -

Dupont's Round Flight -

A Utilitarian View of the Monitor's Flight -

Malvern Hill -

Sheridan at Cedar Creek -

In the Prison Pen -

The College Colonel -

The Eagle of the Blue -

"The Coming Storm" -

On the Slain Collegians -

The House-Top -

The Apparition (A Retrospect) -

On the Photograph of a Corps Commander -

Shiloh -

A Canticle -

Other Poems:
The Aeolian Harp -

The Berg -

The Maldive Shark -

In a Bye-Canal -

Madam Mirror -

Fragments of a Lost Gnostic Poem of the 12th Century -

Lone Founts -

To Ned -

Monody -

After the Pleasure Party -

Immolated -

In a Garret -

Art -

The Attic Landscape -

Greek Architecture -

The Apparition (The Parthenon) -

The Age of the Antonines -

The Ravaged Villa -

The Blue-Bird -

The New Rosicrucians -

The Lake -

[Jeff · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book is from 1950; the editor, Richard Chase, gained permission from F. Barron Freeman to re-print, five years after its initial publication in Freeman's Melville's Billy Budd, the streamlined text of Melville's last, posthumous work, here the 74 called The Indomitable, title Billy Budd, Foretopman, the platitudes removed from Chapter 31, and some of the homoerotic byplay between Claggart and Billy scoured from the original text that had been edited in 1919 by Raymond Weaver. A subsequent textual establishment, by Harrison Hayward and Merton M. Sealts, Jr., was by 1962 the final one. The story has come down to us in a much different form than as it appears here.

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

Once you get past "Benito Cereno," "Bartleby the Scrivener," and "Billy Budd" (which are the three I'd already read), Melville's short fiction is fairly forgettable. The stories not bad, they're just a little thin. The major exception is "The Encantandas," a beautiful, sad, and funny series of sketches and stories about the Enchanted Islands.

I confess, I did not read the poems.

[Sean · Rating 5 out of 5]

benito cerano is one of the great constructs of 19th cent. short fiction- Melville at the height of his skills. I read this over the new year holiday, so not much else comes to mind...

[Dan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Familiar and not-so-familiar stories (some for good reason), followed by mostly forgettable poems.