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Herman Melville
Author
Summary
An aging lawyer hires a new copyist to help with his firm's workload, and at first he finds himself pleased with his new employee. Bartleby is quiet, efficient and he doesn't display any of the loud eccentricities of the firm's other two copyists, Nippers and Turkey. But one day, when the lawyer asks Bartleby if he will help him compare copies, Bartleby simply replies, "I would prefer not to." As time goes by and Bartleby's strange refusals multiply,...
2) Moby Dick
Author
Lexile Measure
1150L
Summary
?Call me Ishmael? is the iconic opening line of Herman Melville?s classic American novel, Moby-Dick. Ishmael is a seaman aboard the whaling vessel, Pequod, under the vengeful captain, Ahab. Maniacally seeking retribution from the great white sperm whale called Moby-Dick--the whale responsible for the captain?s missing leg--Ahab leads the crew on a quest to kill the infamous beast.
Author
Lexile Measure
420L
Summary
"Moby Dick by Herman Melville is the story of Captain Ahab's quest to avenge the whale that 'reaped' his leg. The quest is an obsession and the novel is a diabolical study of how a man becomes a fanatic. But it is also a hymn to democracy. Bent as the crew is on Ahab's appalling crusade, it is equally the image of a co-operative community at work: all hands dependent on all hands, each individual responsible for the security of each. Among the crew...
Author
Summary
A fictionalized account about the revolt on a 19th-century Spanish slavery ship, Benito Cereno was first published in three installments in 1855. Melville scholar Merton M. Sealts, Jr. called the story "an oblique comment on those prevailing attitudes toward blacks and slavery in the United States that would ultimately precipitate civil war between North and South." The famous question of what had cast such a shadow upon Cereno was used by American...
Author
Summary
On April Fool's Day in 1856, a shape-shifting grifter boards a Mississippi riverboat to expose the pretenses, hypocrisies, and self-delusions of his fellow passengers. The con artist assumes numerous identities - a disabled beggar, a charity fundraiser, a successful businessman, an urbane gentleman - to win over his not-entirely-innocent dupes. The central character's shifting identities, as fluid as the river itself, reflect broader aspects of human...
6) Typee
Author
Summary
The young adventurous sailors, Tommo and Toby, abandon ship and flee into the jungle of an island in French Polynesia. But their feelings of victory will be short-lived. Because they are about to run straight into the hands of the Typee, the most feared of the battling cannibal tribes. Inspired by his own adventures, twenty-five-year-old Herman Melville wrote 'Typee' (1846) as a blend of creative memoir, cultural commentary, and good story-telling....
Author
Summary
In Manhattan, an elderly lawyer's business is growing. Having two scriveners in his employ, the lawyer advertises for a third to meet demand. Enter Bartleby, a glum albeit quality scrivener. However, the lawyer quickly discovers that something is off with his new employee. When asked to perform any duties outside of copying, Bartleby responds with a canned I would prefer not to. Soon Bartleby is living at the office and performing less and less at...
9) Piazza tales
Author
Summary
The Piazza Tales is more approachable and just as compelling as any of Melville's longer works. In its six short stories, we find, among other fascinating characters, an office worker who refuses to work, a shipload of rebellious slaves, at least one charlatan, several unhinged sailors, some outright madmen, a marooned woman, and a secretive, self-destructive inventor. In addition, as pretentious as it might sound, there are life lessons to be learned,...
Author
Publication Date
2015
Summary
Herman Melville is a giant of American literature, whose novels are hailed as literary masterpieces. This eBook offers readers the complete works for the first time in digital print, as well as an array of bonus features.
Features:
* illustrated with many images relating to Melville's life and works
* annotated with concise introductions to the novels and other works
* ALL the novels with separate contents tables
* MOBY-DICK
Author
Summary
Following the commercial and critical success of Typee , Herman Melville continued his series of South Sea adventure-romances with Omoo. Named after the Polynesian term for a rover, or someone who roams from island to island, Omoo chronicles the tumultuous events aboard a South Sea whaling vessel and is based on Melville's personal experiences as a crew member on a ship sailing the Pacific. From recruiting among the natives for sailors to handling...
13) Redburn, his first voyage ; White-jacket, or, The world in a man-of-war ; Moby-Dick, or, The whale
Author
Publication Date
c1983
Author
Publication Date
2001
Summary
The first edition of Melville's tales and poems in fifty years and the only one currently in print, this edition presents Melville's full array of short works as they appeared in magazines, private printings and manuscript, along with a generous sampling of his most significant poetry (an unjustly neglected facet of his ouvre). Senior Melvillean John Bryant brings extensive scholarly experience to the task; along with such classics as Bartleby the...
Author
Publication Date
2015.
Lexile Measure
810L
Summary
Aboard the Pequod, seventeen-year-old Ishmael arrives on the planet Cretacea to hunt down great ocean-dwelling beasts to harvest and send back to the resource-depleted Earth. But the ship's captain, Ahab, who lost his leg to the Great Terrafin years ago, is obsessed with hunting down the beast. The classic tale of Moby Dick as set in the future.
19) Mighty Moby
Author
Publication Date
2017.
Summary
A bedtime story of a whale hunt inspired by the classic tale of the hunt for Moby Dick, here with a new twist. Deep in the dark ocean, Mighty Moby lurks. Up above the ocean waves, a one-legged captain pursues the whale he clashed with long ago.
20) The whale
Publication Date
[2015]
Summary
On November 20, 1820, in the Southeast Pacific, an enormous 85-foot sperm whale rammed and sank Nantucket whale ship The Essex and set its crew adrift more than a thousand miles from land. Only eight members of the young crew survived starvation, thirst and exposure, rescued at last by British whale ships three months later. Elderly Tom Nickerson recalls how, in 1819, he went to sea as cabin boy on The Essex, leaving Nantucket. Its recently promoted...
