The Portable Melville (Viking portable library) - Softcover

Melville, Herman; Leyda, Jay

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0140150587 ISBN 13: 9780140150582

Publisher: Penguin Classics, 1979

Synopsis

A collection of letters, verses, and excerpts from the works of this author of Moby Dick

About this title

About the Author:

Herman Melville (1819-91) became in his late twenties a highly successful author of exotic novels based on his experiences as a sailor - writing in quick succession Typee, Omoo, Redburn and White-Jacket. However, his masterpiece Moby-Dick was met with incomprehension and the other later works which are now the basis of his reputation, such as Bartleby, the Scrivener and The Confidence-Man, were failures. Melville stopped writing fiction and the rest of his long life was spent first as a lecturer and then, for nineteen years, as a customs official in New York City. He was also the author of the immensely long poem Clarel, which was similarly dismissed. At the end of his life he wrote Billy Budd, Sailor which was published posthumously in 1924.

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin Classics
• Publication date: 1979
• ISBN 10: 0140150587
• ISBN 13: 9780140150582
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 768