Billy Budd, Sailor (An Inside Narrative Reading Text and Genetic Text) (Paperback)

by Herman Melville (Author), Harrison Hayford (Editor), Merton M. Sealts Jr. (Editor) "In the time before steamships, or then more frequently than now, a stroller along the docks of any considerable seaport would occasionally have his attention..." (more)
Key Phrases: draft headnote, conventional felon, pencil revisions, Captain Vere, Billy Budd, Handsome Sailor (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

Hayford and Sealts's text was the first accurate version of Melville's final novel. Based on a close analysis of the manuscript, thoroughly annotated, and packaged with a history of the text and perspectives for its criticism, this edition will remain the definitive version of a profoundly suggestive story.

"The texts are impeccably accurate. . . . The collection is accompanied by an unobtrusive but expert annotation. . . . Probably Melville's finest short work, the incomplete 'Billy Budd,' [is] a striking reworking of the crucifixion set in the English maritime service of the Revolutionary period."—John Sutherland, The Los Angeles Times

About the Author
Herman Melville was born in 1819 in New York City. After his father's death he left school for a series of clerical jobs before going to sea as a young man of nineteen. At twenty-one he shipped aboard the whaler Acushnet and began a series of adventures in the South Seas that would last for three years and form the basis for his first two novels, Typee and Omoo. Although these two novels sold well and gained for Melville a measure of fame, nineteenth-century readers were puzzled by the experiments with form that he began with his third novel, Mardi, and continued brilliantly in his masterpiece, Moby-Dick. During his later years spent working as a customs inspector on the New York docks, Melville published only poems, compiled in a collection entitled Battle-Pieces, and died in 1891 with Billy Budd, Sailor, now considered a classic, still unpublished. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details Paperback: 230 pages Publisher: University Of Chicago Press; annotated edition edition (September 1, 2001) Language: English ISBN-10: 0226321320 ISBN-13: 978-0226321325 Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.2 x 0.6 inches Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies) Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (9 customer reviews) Amazon.com Sales Rank: #537,644 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books) Popular in these categories: (What's this?) #94 in  Books > Literature & Fiction > Authors, A-Z > ( M ) > Melville, Herman #98 in  Books > Literature & Fiction > Classics > United States > Melville, Herman

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Inside This Book (learn more)

First Sentence:
In the time before steamships, or then more frequently than now, a stroller along the docks of any considerable seaport would occasionally have his attention arrested by a group of bronzed mariners, man-of-war's men or merchant sailors in holiday attire, ashore on liberty. Read the first page

Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
draft headnote, conventional felon, pencil revisions, upper gun deck, handsome sailor, drumhead court, hanging scene, genetic text, honest scholar, independent transcription, inside narrative, naval chronicle, great mutiny, starboard watch

Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Captain Vere, Billy Budd, Handsome Sailor, Jemmy Legs, Great Mutiny, Baby Budd, Lieutenant Ratcliffe, William Budd

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Citations (learn more)

This book cites 90 books:

• Billy Budd and Other Stories (Penguin Classics) by Herman Melville on 88 pages
• Moby-Dick, Second Edition (Norton Critical Editions) by Herman Melville on 35 pages
• Moby dick by Melville on 35 pages
• Moby dick by H. Melville on 35 pages
• Moby Dick (Usborne classics) by Herman Melville on 35 pages

See all 90 books this book cites

 

100 books cite this book:

• Sea-Brothers: The Tradition of American Sea Fiction from Moby-Dick to the Present by Bert Bender on 16 pages
• Exiled Royalties: Melville and the Life We Imagine by Robert Milder on 10 pages
• White Lies: Melville's Narratives of Facts by John Samson on 8 pages
• The Dark Landscape of Modern Fiction by Patrick Reilly on 5 pages
• Profound Science and Elegant Literature: Imagining Doctors in Nineteenth-Century America by Stephanie P. Browner on 4 pages

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Books on Related Topics (learn more)

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Four Classic American Novels by Nathaniel Hawthorne

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Great Short Works of Herman Melville by Herman Melville

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Billy Budd, Sailor and Selected Tales by Herman Melville

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Melville by Laurie Robertson-Lorant

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• Captain Vere

Billy Budd and Other Stories by Herman Melville Discusses: upper gun deck drumhead court Captain Vere Billy Budd and Other Tales by Herman Melville Discusses: conventional felon upper gun deck handsome sailor Four Classic American Novels by Nathaniel Hawthorne Discusses: conventional felon upper gun deck handsome sailor Great Short Works of Herman Melville by Herman Melville Discusses: conventional felon upper gun deck handsome sailor Loading...

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	7% buy Billy Budd and Other Tales 3.4 out of 5 stars (41) $4.95
	7% buy Billy Budd and Other Stories (Penguin Classics) 4.3 out of 5 stars (11) $9.00

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9 Reviews 5 star:  (6) 4 star:  (3) 3 star:    (0) 2 star:    (0) 1 star:    (0)           Average Customer Review 4.7 out of 5 stars (9 customer reviews)		Share your thoughts with other customers:
Most Helpful Customer Reviews 15 of 15 people found the following review helpful: 5.0 out of 5 stars The Best Edition of Billy Budd, December 13, 2000 By  Melvin Pena (Evanston, IL United States) - See all my reviews Herman Melville's novella "Billy Budd" recounts the tragic story of a young man impressed into service aboard the British man-of-war 'Bellipotent' in the late 1790's. Billy is called the 'Handsome Sailor' no less because of his angelic features than for his absolute moral purity and innocence. Initially aboard a merchantman, where he is revered by his fellows and treated accordingly, once aboard a warship, Billy is not greeted by such universal admiration. John Claggart, the master-at-arms, the policeman of the ship, fosters an intense homoerotic hatred of Billy, drawing the young man into the commerce of realistic human interaction. Melville does a fantastic job in so short a work of characterization. From the main characters, Budd, Claggart, and the captain/philosopher Starry Vere, to minor characters of significance like the old Dansker, Melville gives carefully detailed and finely nuanced renderings of the players and their roles and responses to the events of the story. Claggart's conflict with Budd takes on special urgency with the 1790's problem of mutinies aboard British sea-going vessels. Vere and his court must try to distinguish moral responsibility from legal necessity to judge the fatal interactions between Claggart and Budd. Melville is sensitive to late 18th century philosophical currents in regard to both American independence and the French Revolution - Discussions of rights and nature are scattered through the text. Complicating these strains are theological currents of good and evil, innocence and natural depravity. "Billy Budd" is a fine work, and wonderfully complex. This excellent edition, compiled and edited by Hayford and Seals, is the appropriate one for the scholar or the completist. It includes extensive notes and critical interpretations (sadly only through the initial publication of this edition - 1962), photo reprints of Melville's manuscript, and textual commentary. Absolutely worth reading and rereading. 3 of 3 people found the following review helpful: 5.0 out of 5 stars Melville's common man against Burke's paternal authority, September 28, 2007 By  D. Cloyce Smith (Brooklyn, NY) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    Stored away in a tin box and unpublished until 1924, "Billy Budd" has since been released in a number of forms. The confused state of the various drafts and manuscripts and the resulting (significant) disparities among the work's many editions have only increased the multiplicity of interpretations of what is already an extraordinarily complex (but not all that difficult) work. Readers' understanding or pleasure of this deeply textured novella may well depend on the text they select; the version widely considered the standard is Hayford and Sealts's "reading text," which is reprinted in any number of editions, including those available from the University of Chicago Press, Penguin, and The Library of America. "Billy Budd" is often labeled an "unfinished" work--but I think that this intimidating tag does the story an injustice, leading readers to believe that the tale will end mid-sentence, with Billy dangling from the plank of a ship. But this is no "Mystery of Edwin Drood" or "The Castle"; Melville's novel is complete. Instead, one might say it is "unpolished"--although the work's ostensible inconsistencies and errors may have been part and parcel of Melville's clearly unreliable narrator--an aspect common to many of his late works, particularly "Pierre" and "The Confidence-Man." So what's it about? And, more perplexingly, what does it mean? This tale of the sea relates the adulation and eventual persecution of the ever-trusting Billy Budd, the "Handsome Sailor" on a British merchant ship who, at the book's opening, is forcibly impressed by the warship "Bellipotent." In his new post, the innocent naif is worshipped by the rest of the crew, which arouses the dangerous jealousy of the master-at-arms, John Claggart, the protective watchfulness of the old salt Dansker, and the conflicted paternal instincts of the ship's captain, Edward Vere. The dynamics of the tensions among these four shipmates lead to a horrible accident which tests the principles of each of the survivors. At its most basic, Melville is a retelling of the biblical tale of Abraham and Isaac (a parallel made explicitly in the text), but in this story God remains aloof: Captain Vere must decide on his own whether Billy is to be sacrificed on the rock of military discipline. And, even more obviously, Billy is the ship's Christ figure. But, biblical allusions aside, Billy can also be seen as the common man controlled by the paternalism of nobility. The ship from which Billy is kidnapped is the "Rights-of-Man," and "the dry and bookish" Vere (who shares his name with one of the more famous Earls of Oxford) is unsubtly modeled after that idol of conservatism Edmund Burke ("his settled convictions were as a dike against those invading waters of novel opinion social, political, and otherwise"). Billy's eventual transformation as a symbol of the strong arm of the law disguises what's really at stake: is it the preservation of aristocratic power--or the prevention of anarchy? (Melville's own sympathies were equally ambiguous.) More subtle still is the issue of race: the archetypal Handsome Sailor, mentioned in passing on the first page of the book, is "so intensely black that he must needs have been a native African." Through the compulsory act of impressment, Billy (whose "lily was quite suppressed" by his tan) becomes a slave under the arbitrary white rule of the ship. The book's finale and its understated aftermath never fail to amaze and sadden me. My amazement results from Melville's ability to turn what could be a treacly ending into a statement on democracy and humankind (much like he did in the less successful "Israel Potter"); the sadness stems from the obvious truth in the author's views on power and subservience. In spite of its being a slim and "unfinished" novella, "Billy Budd" remains one of the most multifaceted classics of American literature. 3 of 3 people found the following review helpful: 4.0 out of 5 stars Elisabeth, Billy Budd, December 9, 2003 By A Customer This review is from: Billy Budd, Sailor (Enriched Classics Series) (Mass Market Paperback) Melville's short novel, Billy Budd, relates the late eighteenth century story of a naive, innocent, young sailor, who is hated by John Claggart, the ship's master-at-arms. Good versus evil, the individual versus society, absolute law versus mercy are all themes in the novel. Billy Budd contains many Christian allusions, and some commentators have suggested the novel is a Christian allegory that depicts the sacrifice of an innocent man. The narrator repeatedly draws comparisons between Billy Budd and Christ and Claggart and Satan. Although the reader must be willing to wade through many unfamiliar allusions and difficult vocabulary, the novel has a simple, but gripping plot line with universal themes.		Most Recent Customer Reviews 5.0 out of 5 stars There Are Some Interesting Reviews Here... ... and my contribution, I admit, raises more questions than it answers. Is Billy Budd a Political Allegory? Or is it an oblique admission of latent homosexuality? Read more Published 2 days ago by Giordano Bruno 5.0 out of 5 stars Mystery of Iniquity Melville's posthumous long story of the handsome sailor is the only tragedy that he wrote. I see it in the neighborhood of Heinrich von Kleist's Prince of Homburg (the Prussian... Read more Published 5 months ago by H. Schneider 5.0 out of 5 stars Time and Growth The first time I encountered Billy Budd, I was merely 16 years old and incredibly disappointed with Melville's classic. Read more Published on September 2, 2004 by R. Humphrey 4.0 out of 5 stars Elisabeth, Billy Budd Melville's short novel, Billy Budd, relates the story of a naive, innocent, young sailor hated by John Claggart, the ship's master-at-arms. Read more Published on December 10, 2003 4.0 out of 5 stars Melville an american great Herman Melville is one of the lesser known authors.Still his style and skill are not to be ignored.Whenever you wish to explore the development of the United States , and the... Read more Published on October 9, 2001 by T. P. Russell 5.0 out of 5 stars A very good book for historic purphoses This is a good book if you are not reading to be entertained by a story, but if you want to understand what Melville is really talking about and get a lot more out of it then you... Read more Published on September 6, 1999 Search Customer Reviews Only search this product's reviews

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Product Details

• Paperback: 230 pages
• Publisher: University Of Chicago Press; annotated edition edition (September 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0226321320
• ISBN-13: 978-0226321325
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.2 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #537,644 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

  Popular in these categories: (What's this?)

  #94 in	Books > Literature & Fiction > Authors, A-Z > ( M ) > Melville, Herman
  #98 in	Books > Literature & Fiction > Classics > United States > Melville, Herman

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Best Edition of Billy Budd, December 13, 2000

By	Melvin Pena (Evanston, IL United States) - See all my reviews

Herman Melville's novella "Billy Budd" recounts the tragic story of a young man impressed into service aboard the British man-of-war 'Bellipotent' in the late 1790's. Billy is called the 'Handsome Sailor' no less because of his angelic features than for his absolute moral purity and innocence. Initially aboard a merchantman, where he is revered by his fellows and treated accordingly, once aboard a warship, Billy is not greeted by such universal admiration. John Claggart, the master-at-arms, the policeman of the ship, fosters an intense homoerotic hatred of Billy, drawing the young man into the commerce of realistic human interaction.

Melville does a fantastic job in so short a work of characterization. From the main characters, Budd, Claggart, and the captain/philosopher Starry Vere, to minor characters of significance like the old Dansker, Melville gives carefully detailed and finely nuanced renderings of the players and their roles and responses to the events of the story.

Claggart's conflict with Budd takes on special urgency with the 1790's problem of mutinies aboard British sea-going vessels. Vere and his court must try to distinguish moral responsibility from legal necessity to judge the fatal interactions between Claggart and Budd. Melville is sensitive to late 18th century philosophical currents in regard to both American independence and the French Revolution - Discussions of rights and nature are scattered through the text. Complicating these strains are theological currents of good and evil, innocence and natural depravity. "Billy Budd" is a fine work, and wonderfully complex.

This excellent edition, compiled and edited by Hayford and Seals, is the appropriate one for the scholar or the completist. It includes extensive notes and critical interpretations (sadly only through the initial publication of this edition - 1962), photo reprints of Melville's manuscript, and textual commentary. Absolutely worth reading and rereading.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Melville's common man against Burke's paternal authority, September 28, 2007

By	D. Cloyce Smith (Brooklyn, NY) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

Stored away in a tin box and unpublished until 1924, "Billy Budd" has since been released in a number of forms. The confused state of the various drafts and manuscripts and the resulting (significant) disparities among the work's many editions have only increased the multiplicity of interpretations of what is already an extraordinarily complex (but not all that difficult) work. Readers' understanding or pleasure of this deeply textured novella may well depend on the text they select; the version widely considered the standard is Hayford and Sealts's "reading text," which is reprinted in any number of editions, including those available from the University of Chicago Press, Penguin, and The Library of America.

"Billy Budd" is often labeled an "unfinished" work--but I think that this intimidating tag does the story an injustice, leading readers to believe that the tale will end mid-sentence, with Billy dangling from the plank of a ship. But this is no "Mystery of Edwin Drood" or "The Castle"; Melville's novel is complete. Instead, one might say it is "unpolished"--although the work's ostensible inconsistencies and errors may have been part and parcel of Melville's clearly unreliable narrator--an aspect common to many of his late works, particularly "Pierre" and "The Confidence-Man."

So what's it about? And, more perplexingly, what does it mean? This tale of the sea relates the adulation and eventual persecution of the ever-trusting Billy Budd, the "Handsome Sailor" on a British merchant ship who, at the book's opening, is forcibly impressed by the warship "Bellipotent." In his new post, the innocent naif is worshipped by the rest of the crew, which arouses the dangerous jealousy of the master-at-arms, John Claggart, the protective watchfulness of the old salt Dansker, and the conflicted paternal instincts of the ship's captain, Edward Vere. The dynamics of the tensions among these four shipmates lead to a horrible accident which tests the principles of each of the survivors.

At its most basic, Melville is a retelling of the biblical tale of Abraham and Isaac (a parallel made explicitly in the text), but in this story God remains aloof: Captain Vere must decide on his own whether Billy is to be sacrificed on the rock of military discipline. And, even more obviously, Billy is the ship's Christ figure.

But, biblical allusions aside, Billy can also be seen as the common man controlled by the paternalism of nobility. The ship from which Billy is kidnapped is the "Rights-of-Man," and "the dry and bookish" Vere (who shares his name with one of the more famous Earls of Oxford) is unsubtly modeled after that idol of conservatism Edmund Burke ("his settled convictions were as a dike against those invading waters of novel opinion social, political, and otherwise"). Billy's eventual transformation as a symbol of the strong arm of the law disguises what's really at stake: is it the preservation of aristocratic power--or the prevention of anarchy? (Melville's own sympathies were equally ambiguous.) More subtle still is the issue of race: the archetypal Handsome Sailor, mentioned in passing on the first page of the book, is "so intensely black that he must needs have been a native African." Through the compulsory act of impressment, Billy (whose "lily was quite suppressed" by his tan) becomes a slave under the arbitrary white rule of the ship.

The book's finale and its understated aftermath never fail to amaze and sadden me. My amazement results from Melville's ability to turn what could be a treacly ending into a statement on democracy and humankind (much like he did in the less successful "Israel Potter"); the sadness stems from the obvious truth in the author's views on power and subservience. In spite of its being a slim and "unfinished" novella, "Billy Budd" remains one of the most multifaceted classics of American literature.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Elisabeth, Billy Budd, December 9, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Billy Budd, Sailor (Enriched Classics Series) (Mass Market Paperback)

Melville's short novel, Billy Budd, relates the late eighteenth century story of a naive, innocent, young sailor, who is hated by John Claggart, the ship's master-at-arms. Good versus evil, the individual versus society, absolute law versus mercy are all themes in the novel. Billy Budd contains many Christian allusions, and some commentators have suggested the novel is a Christian allegory that depicts the sacrifice of an innocent man. The narrator repeatedly draws comparisons between Billy Budd and Christ and Claggart and Satan. Although the reader must be willing to wade through many unfamiliar allusions and difficult vocabulary, the novel has a simple, but gripping plot line with universal themes.