Back Pierre, Israel Potter, The Piazza Tales, The Confidence-Man, Billy Budd, Uncollected Prose

Herman Melville: Pierre, Israel Potter, The Piazza Tales, The Confidence-Man, Billy Budd, Uncollected Prose

Edited by Harrison Hayford

“A landmark achievement, one in keeping with The Library of America’s already sterling reputation of providing the best in American literature at a reasonable price.” — The Chattanooga Times

Overview
News & Views
Table of Contents

Overview

Story of the Week Herman Melville, “Jimmy Rose”
August 1, 2022

Interviews LOA celebrates Herman Melville’s 200th birthday with his Complete Poems
September 23, 2019

News Nathaniel Philbrick asks Why Read Moby-Dick? and many rise to the “cunning test”
August 8, 2019

Forgoing the narratives of the sea that prevailed in his earlier works, Melville’s later fiction contains some of the finest and many of his keenest and bleakest observations of life, not on the high seas, but at home in America. With the publication of this Library of America volume, the third of three volumes, all Melville’s fiction has now been restored to print for the first time.

Pierre; or, The Ambiguities, published in 1852 (the year after Moby-Dick), moves between the idyllic Berkshire countryside and the nightmare landscape of early New York City. Its hero, a young American patrician trying to redeem the secret sins of his father, elopes to the city, discovers Bohemian life, attempts a literary epic, and struggles his way through incest, murder, and madness. Long a controversial work, it is Melville’s darkest satire of American life and letters and one of his most powerful books.

A pivotal work, both for Melville’s career and for American literature, Pierre was followed by Israel Potter, the story of a veteran of the Revolution, victim of a thousand mischances, and a long-suffering exile in England. Along the way are memorable episodes of war and intrigue, with personal portraits of Benjamin Franklin, John Paul Jones, and George III. In the exploits of this touchingly optimistic soldier, Melville offers a scathing image of the collapse of revolutionary hopes.

The Piazza Tales demonstrates Melville’s dazzling mastery of many styles, including “The Encantadas,” about nature’s two faces—enchanting and horrific; the famous “Bartleby the Scrivener,” about a Wall Street copyist who “would prefer not to”; and the enigmatic “Benito Cereno,” about a credulous Yankee sea captain who stumbles into an intricately plotted mutiny aboard a disabled slave ship.

The Confidence-Man, Melville’s last published novel, is in many ways a forerunner of modernist American fiction. An extended meditation on faith, hope, and charity as these are manifested on board a Mississippi riverboat one April Fools’ Day, it presents a menagerie of Americans buying and selling, borrowing and lending, believing and mistrusting, as they are carried toward the auction blocks of New Orleans.

Many pieces never before collected are also included: the “Authentic Anecdotes of Old Zack” (burlesque sketches of Zachary Taylor’s Mexican campaign), “Fragments from a Writing-Desk” (Melville’s earliest surviving prose), reviews of Hawthorne, Parkman, and Cooper, and all the tales Melville published in magazines during the 1850s.

Finally, there is the posthumously published masterpiece Billy Budd, Sailor, the haunting story of a beautiful, innocent sailor who is pressed into naval service, slandered, provoked to murder, and sacrificed to military justice. While encouraging questions for which there are no answers, it invites us to meditate on the conflicts central to all Melville’s work: between freedom and fate, innocence and civilized corruption.

Harrison Hayford, volume editor, was a professor of English at Northwestern University and co-editor of the Northwestern-Newberry Edition of The Writings of Herman Melville.

This Library of America series edition is printed on acid-free paper and features Smyth-sewn binding, a full cloth cover, and a ribbon marker.

Herman Melville: Pierre, Israel Potter, The Piazza Tales, The Confidence-Man, Billy Budd, Uncollected Prose is kept in print by a gift from Jerard P. Reilly to the Guardians of American Letters Fund, made in honor of Grace Eleanor Reilly.
News & Views

Story of the Week Herman Melville, “Jimmy Rose”
August 1, 2022

Interviews LOA celebrates Herman Melville’s 200th birthday with his Complete Poems
September 23, 2019

News Nathaniel Philbrick asks Why Read Moby-Dick? and many rise to the “cunning test”
August 8, 2019

The Moviegoer Peter Ustinov’s Billy Budd: Elemental conflict in a vivid tapestry of life at sea
August 1, 2019

Interviews The War Before the War: Andrew Delbanco on fugitive slaves and the fragility of the American Republic
November 20, 2018
Table of Contents

Pierre; or, The Ambiguities

Israel Potter: His Fifty Years of Exile

The Piazza Tales
The Piazza
Bartleby, the Scrivener
Benito Cereno
The Lightning-Rod Man
The Encantadas, or Enchanted Isles
The Bell-Tower

The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade

Uncollected Prose
Articles and Reviews
Etchings of a Whaling Cruise
Authentic Anecdotes of “Old Zack”
Mr Parkman’s Tour
Cooper’s New Novel
A Thought on Book-Binding
Hawthorne and His Mosses
Tales
Fragments from a Writing Desk
The Happy Failure
The Fiddler
Cock-A-Doodle-Doo!
Poor Man’s Pudding and Rich Man’s Crumbs
The Two Temples
The Paradise of Bachelors and the Tartarus of Maids
Jimmy Rose
The ‘Gees
I and My Chimney
The Apple-Tree Table

Billy Budd, Sailor (An Inside Narrative)

30.00 List Price: $50.00 (Save: 40%) Free shipping on orders $50 and over

Or buy from our partners

Phone orders: 1-800-964-5778 Request product #200248

ISBN: 978-0-940450-24-0 1478 pages

LOA books are distributed worldwide by Penguin Random House

N° 24 Library of America Series

Subscribers can purchase the slipcased edition by signing in to their accounts.

Related Books

Nathaniel Hawthorne: Collected Novels LOA N°10

Herman Melville: Redburn, White-Jacket, Moby-Dick LOA N°9

Nathaniel Hawthorne: Tales & Sketches LOA N°2

Herman Melville: Typee, Omoo, Mardi LOA N°1

James Fenimore Cooper: Sea Tales LOA N°54

Library of America

CURATOR

A champion of America’s great writers and timeless works, Library of America guides readers in finding and exploring the exceptional writing that reflects the nation’s history and culture.

Learn More

PUBLISHER

From poetry, novels, and memoirs to journalism, crime writing, and science fiction, the more than 300 volumes published by Library of America are widely recognized as America’s literary canon.

Browse our books Subscribe

NON-PROFIT

With contributions from donors, Library of America preserves and celebrates a vital part of our cultural heritage for generations to come.

Support our mission

Herman Melville: Pierre, Israel Potter, The Piazza Tales, The Confidence-Man, Billy Budd, Uncollected Prose

Related Books

Get 10% off your first Library of America purchase.