Tales, Poems, and Other Writings

(Paperback)

Publishing Details

Classifications

Physical Properties

Description

From short masterpieces like Bartleby the Scrivener and Billy Budd to more obscure, even completely unknown works like the epic poem Clarel, Melvilles stories and poems rank among his greatest and most gripping work. This unique anthologythe first of its kind in fifty yearsgathers together all of Melvilles tales, as well as a judiciously edited array of his prose poems, literary criticism, letters, lectures, and poetry. Though few realize it today, poetry was Melvilles abiding passion; yet his poetry has never received the recognition it deserves, until now.

Containing many writings available nowhere else, and edited by leading Melville scholar John Bryant, Tales, Poems, and Other Writings includes a comprehensive introductory essay and extensive, in many cases groundbreaking, editorial commentary. It opens a window onto Melvilles writing processhe was a ceaseless reviser and experimenterand reveals his career-long evolution as a writer as well as the full breadth of his literary achievement. And it marks a new stage in our ability to appreciate not only the work of one of our greatest writers, but the immense dedication that lay behind it.

John Bryant is a professor of English at Hofstra University. He has published five books and numerous articles on Melville, and is the editor of the Penguin Classics edition of Typee and the Modern Library edition of The Confidence-Man. He has been the general editor of the Melville Society, one of the oldest and largest single-author societies in America, since 1990.

Reviews

An amazing guided tour of the real Melville. Robert Sullivan

Bryant shows us the writer who, . . . even when he worked in obscurity and despair, was constantly changing, constantly revising, constantly experimenting, with new and more beautiful formsa writer who had to keep moving, like a shark. Robert Sullivan, author of A Whale Hunt and The Meadowlands

No other anthology presents the extraordinary range of Melvilles writing across the second half of the nineteenth century or makes vivid Melvilles restless experiments in prose and poetry . . . the fullest picture of Melvilles achievement available in a single volume. Samuel Otter, professor of English, University of California at Berkeley

Bryant, a Melville expert with a clear and vigorous prose style, offers a fresh view of Melville. . . . Bryants well-chosen selections . . . support his assertion that Melville and his grand, complex, and soulful work need to be seen in a new light. Booklist

Author Bio

John Bryant is professor of English at Hofstra University. He has published five books on Melville and numerous articles. He has been the general editor of the Melville Society, one of the oldest and largest single-author societies in America, since 1990.