Herman Melville: Omoo, Billy Budd and the Piazza Tales (Ivory Classics)
- ISBN-10
- 1976107458
- ISBN-13
- 9781976107450
- Series
- Herman Melville
- Pages
- 490
- Language
- English
- Published
- 2017-09-15
- Author
- Herman Melville
Description
Herman Melville (August 1, 1819 - September 28, 1891) was an American novelist, short story writer, and poet of the American Renaissance period. His best known works include Typee (1846), a romantic account of his experiences in Polynesian life, and his whaling novel Moby-Dick (1851). His work was almost forgotten during his last thirty years. His writing draws on his experience at sea as a common sailor, exploration of literature and philosophy, and engagement in the contradictions of American society in a period of rapid change. He developed a complex, baroque style: the vocabulary is rich and original, a strong sense of rhythm infuses the elaborate sentences, the imagery is often mystical or ironic, and the abundance of allusion extends to biblical Scripture, myth, philosophy, literature, and the visual arts.His first book, Typee (1846), a highly romanticized account of his life among Polynesians, became such a best-seller that he worked up a sequel, Omoo (1847). During his last years, he privately published two volumes of poetry, left one volume unpublished, and returned to prose of the sea: the novella Billy Budd, left unfinished at his death, was published in 1924. From 1853 to 1856, Melville published short fiction in magazines, most notably "Bartleby, the Scrivener" (1853), "The Encantadas" (1854), and "Benito Cereno" (1855). These and three other stories were collected in 1856 as The Piazza Tales.
