Billy Budd, Sailor

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Description

Found unpublished on Herman Melville's desk at the time of his death, Billy Budd, Sailor would emerge after its publication in 1924 as one of the author's best-loved books - and one of his most open, with its discussion of homosexualty. One of the major works of American literature.

Reviews

"The most studied and admired of Melville's works except for Moby-Dick." --John Updike

"[A] late-life masterpiece." --The New York Review of Books

Author Bio

Herman Melville was born in New York City in 1819. At eighteen, he set sail on a whaler, and upon his return, wrote a series of bestselling adventure novels based on his travels, including Typee and Omoo, which made him famous. Starting with Moby-Dick in 1851, however, his increasingly complex and challenging work drew more and more negative criticism, until 1857 when, after his collection Piazza Tales (which included "Bartleby the Scrivener"), and the novel The Confidence Man, Melville stopped publishing fiction. He drifted into obscurity, writing poetry and working for the Customs House in New York City, until his death in 1891.