Redburn (Modern Library) (Modern Library Classics) - Softcover

Herman Melville

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0375760040 ISBN 13: 9780375760044

Publisher: Modern Library Inc, 2002

Synopsis

Drawn from Melville's own adolescent experience aboard a merchant ship, Redburn charts the coming-of-age of Wellingborough Redburn, a young innocent who embarks on a crossing to Liverpool together with a roguish crew. Once in Liverpool, Redburn encounters the squalid conditions of the city and meets Harry Bolton, a bereft and damaged soul, who takes him on a tour of London that includes a scene of rococo decadence unlike anything else in Melville's fiction. In her Introduction, Elizabeth Hardwick writes, "Redburn is rich in masterful portraits--a gallery of wild colors, pretensions and falsehoods, fleeting associations of unexpected tenderness. . . . Redburn is not a document; it is a work of art by the unexpected genius of a sailor, Herman Melville."

This Modern Library Paperback Classic is set from the text of the first American edition of 1849.

About this title

Review:

"Redburn, recalling the cruel memories of [Melville's] youth, was the first bitter cry of his maturity. . . . The book has the wry humour of the grown man. . . . Redburn was a victory." --Lewis Mumford

From the Back Cover:

From his own experiences as a 'boy' on a packet ship sailing between New York and Liverpool, Melville wove the story of Wellingborough Redburn: a tale of pastoral innocence transformed into disenchantment and disillusionment. Within the taut power structure of life aboard ship, the young Redburn suffers the bullying and brutality of officers and men, and encounters below deck the dominating presence of the sickly and manic Jackson.

About this edition

• Publisher: Modern Library Inc
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0375760040
• ISBN 13: 9780375760044
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 416