Billy Budd, Sailor - Couverture souple

Melville, Herman

Couverture souple

ISBN 10 : 014062175X ISBN 13 : 9780140621754

Editeur : Penguin Books Ltd, 1995

Synopsis

Stung by the difficult reception of Moby Dick, Herman Melville became obsessed with the difficulties of communicating his vision to readers. His sesne of isolation lies at the heart of these later works. "Billy Budd, Sailor" is a classic confrontation between good and evil, and the story of an innocent young man unable to defend himself against a wrongful accusation. The other stories also illuminate the way fictions are created and shared by society.

A propos du livre

Biographie de l'auteur

Herman Melville was born in August 1, 1819, in New York City, the son of a merchant. Only twelve when his father died bankrupt, young Herman tried work as a bank clerk, as a cabin-boy on a trip to Liverpool, and as an elementary schoolteacher, before shipping in January 1841 on the whaler Acushnet, bound for the Pacific. Deserting ship the following year in the Marquesas, he made his way to Tahiti and Honolulu, returning as ordinary seaman on the frigate United States to Boston, where he was discharged in October 1844. Books based on these adventures won him immediate success. By 1850 he was married, had acquired a farm near Pittsfield, Massachussetts (where he was the impetuous friend and neighbor of Nathaniel Hawthorne), and was hard at work on his masterpiece Moby-Dick.

Literary success soon faded; his complexity increasingly alienated readers. After a visit to the Holy Land in January 1857, he turned from writing prose fiction to poetry. In 1863, during the Civil War, he moved back to New York City, where from 1866-1885 he was a deputy inspector in the Custom House, and where, in 1891, he died. A draft of a final prose work, Billy Budd, Sailor, was left unfinished and uncollated, packed tidily away by his widow, where it remained until its rediscovery and publication in 1924.

Présentation de l'éditeur

Melvilles last work, it is a brilliant study of conflicts between social authority and individual freedom, human righteousness and evil. It is the story of a naive young man who is accused of a crime he has not committed. Melville has wonderfully portrayed the agony and helplessness of a young spirit against social injustice. Noteworthy for its infinite interpretations it arrests the readers interest.

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: Penguin Books Ltd
• Date d'édition: 1995
• ISBN 10: 014062175X
• ISBN 13: 9780140621754
• Reliure: Broché
• Langue: anglais
• Nombre de pages: 96
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible