Billy Budd and Other Tales Author:Herman Melville Billy Budd - The Piazza - Bartleby - Benito Cereno - The Lightning-Rod Man - The Encatadas - The Bell-Tower - The Town-Ho's Story — Herman Melville's short stories, somewhat neglected during his lifetime, today are considered to be among the small masterpieces of American fiction. — His imagination is inventive, ironic, and extraordinarily... more » attuned to our times. His settings and themes are various: the limits of artistic creation. the opposition of innocence and evil; fear of isolation; the inviolate sanctity of the human heart; the ferfulness of and fascination with "enchanted isles"; the ferocity of the white whale; Calvinist hell-fire and damnation.
Melville's stories, like his great novel Moby-Dick, are unique in narrative method, prfound in theme, and full of delights at all levels. This collection not only includes Billy Bud (in a reading text based on the famous Harvard edition), but also all of The Piazza tales, aw well as "The Town-Ho's Story" from Moby-Dick.« less