Billy Budd, Sailor, and Selected Tales

'Struck dead by an angel of God! Yet the angel must hang!'

Outwardly a compelling narrative of events aboard a British man-of-war during the turmoil of the Napoleonic Wars, Billy Budd is a nautical recasting of the Fall, a parable of good and evil, a meditation on justice and political governance, and a searching portrait of three extraordinary men. The passion it has aroused in its readers over the years is a measure of how deeply it addresses some of the fundamental questions of experience that every age must reexamine for itself.

This edition draws on a new authoritative edition of Billy Budd, Sailor, which corrects the inaccuracies and excesses of former editions of Melville's notoriously incomplete final novella. Accompanied by extensive critical apparatus that draws on a wealth of recent Melville scholarship which highlights his contemporary relevance for questions of economics, ecology, identity, and sexuality and connects it to the key formal and interpretive issues at stake in understanding his art of fiction. It also includes a selection of Melville's short stories, as well as his review of Hawthorne's short fiction, 'Hawthorne and His Mosses'.

ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

Herman Melville, Senior Lecturer of American Literature, University of Sussex

Michael Jonik is Senior Lecturer of American Literature in the School of English and American Studies at the University of Sussex and was a Research Fellow at the Institut d'Études Avancées de Paris (2018-19). He recently published Herman Melville and the Politics of the Inhuman (2018), and he writes on pre-1900 American literature, continental philosophy, contemporary critical theory, radical politics and the history of science. He is founding member of The British Association of Nineteenth-Century Americanists (BrANCA), and Reviews and Special Issues editor for the journal Textual Practice.

IntroductionSelect BibliographyA Chronology of Herman MelvilleThe PiazzaBartleby, the ScrivenerBenito CerenoThe Lightning-Rod ManThe Encantadas, or Enchanted IslesThe Bell-TowerHawthorne and His MossesThe FiddlerCock-A-Doodle-Doo!The Paradise of Bachelors and the Tartarus of MaidsJimmy RoseI and My ChimneyThe Apple-Tree TableBilly Budd, Sailor (An Inside Narrative)Explanatory Notes