No voice, no low, no howl is heard; the chief sound of life here is a hiss. Stories and poems by Herman Melville drawn from his years at sea. Introducing Little Black Classics: 80 books for Penguin's 80th birthday. Little Black Classics celebrate the huge range and diversity of Penguin Classics, with books from around the world and across many centuries. They take us from a balloon ride over Victorian London to a garden of blossom in Japan, from Tierra del Fuego to 16th century California and the Russian steppe. Here are stories lyrical and savage; poems epic and intimate; essays satirical and inspirational; and ideas that have shaped the lives of millions. Herman Melville (1819-1891). Melville's works available in Penguin Classics are Moby-Dick, Pierre, The Confidence-Man, Omoo, Redburn, Israel Potter and Billy Budd, Sailor and Other Stories.

HarperCollins is proud to present its new range of best-loved, essential classics. 'Struck dead by an angel of God! Yet the angel must hang!' It is the end of the eighteenth century, and the navy recruits the eponymous hero — the 'Handsome Sailor' — to its fleet. Accused of mutinous behaviour, Billy Budd is forced to defend himself, but his fearful, silent response soon gives way to a terrible act of violence. The consequences are disastrous, and nothing can prevent the force of judgment and eventual justice upon him. Discovered among Melville's papers after his death and published posthumously in 1924, 'Billy Budd' is a powerful tale of guilt and innocence, crime and punishment, and the cost of adhering to duty. From the author of 'Moby Dick', Melville's allegorical tales are loaded with symbolism, and showcase his distinctive writing style and themes in shorter form.

HarperCollins is proud to present its incredible range of best-loved, essential classics. The young sailor Ishmael befriends a tattooed Polynesian harpooner named Queequeg, and finds himself aboard the Pequod, which is captained by the obsessive Captain Ahab. Not long after the voyage has begun, Ahab tells the crew about his secret plot to hunt down the whale that crippled him on a previous voyage, Moby Dick. The crew of the Pequod are also after as much sperm oil as their ship can carry, and the account of the crew's years-long pursuit of the White Whale is interspersed with detailed and encyclopaedic descriptions of a whaler's life. Melville unites narrative virtuosity with a lifetime of sailing experience in perhaps the single most important classic of American literature.

'Life is a pic-nic en costume; one must take a part, assume a character, stand ready in a sensible way to play the fool'. On the 1st of April aboard a steamboat on the Mississippi, a confidence man comes to trick and swindle his fellow passengers. Herman Melville's last major novel, The Confidence-Man is a masterful comedy of masquerades and digressions, and a brilliant satire of American society. Billy Budd, Sailor, published after Melville's death in 1891, is a gripping allegory of good and evil, as an innocent man, pressed into service on a British man-of-war, is falsely accused of mutiny. Both works are animated with the full genius of Melville, perhaps the greatest of American writers.

'The frail gunwales bent in, collapsed, and snapped, as both jaws, like an enormous shears, sliding further aft, bit the craft completely in twain'... The crew of the whaling ship the Pequod is bound by its Captain Ahab to a single, bloody goal: the killing of the whale Moby-Dick, the giant albino that has taken his leg and on which he has sworn vengeance. Driven, perhaps doomed, by his dangerous monomania, they sail in pursuit of the monster. Moby-Dick is the greatest novel of the sea ever written and one of the most expansive feats of imagination in fiction. Melville unforgettably crews the Pequod, and at the book's mad, raging heart, Ahab's quest for the white whale is one of the most powerful symbols in literature.

Call me Ishmael. These three famous words begin one of the most epic novels ever written, a tale of one obsessed captain, his doomed crew and an elusive white whale named Moby-Dick. The massive original, however, can be very hard for young readers to navigate. This beautifully abridged and adventure-filled version will thrill children and whet their appetite for the complete work — when they are ready to tackle it.

Walker Illustrated Classics is a new series which brings together some of the best-loved stories ever told, illustrated by some of today's finest artists. These exquisitely designed books, with their magnificent words and glorious pictures, are a pleasure to read — and re-read. The classics have never looked so good! Haunted by prophesies of his own death, Captain Ahab hunts the vast waters of the Pacific in search of the great white whale that has become his obsession. This towering novel has been sympathetically edited to a tenth of its original length, focussing on the exciting chase at the core of the book, as all but one of the Pequods loyal crew are sacrificed to Ahab's great obsession. A true classic of American literature is brought to life in this lavish illustrated edition.

Provides a simplified and shortened retelling of a literary classic. This book intends to encourage enthusiastic young readers to pursue an interest in literature. It is also suitable for older readers who prefer a quick read.

Moby Dick is the most dangerous whale in the oceans. Captain Ahab fought him and lost a leg. Now he hates Moby Dick. He wants to kill him. But can Captain Ahab and his men find the great white whale? A young sailor, Ishmael, tells the story of their exciting and dangerous trip.

Truth uncompromisingly told will always have its ragged edges. So wrote Melville of Billy Budd, Sailor, among the greatest of his works and, in its richness and ambiguity, among the most problematic. As the critic E. L. Grant Watson writes, In this short history of the impressment and hanging of a handsome sailor-boy are to be discovered problems as profound as those which puzzle us in the pages of the Gospels. Outwardly a compelling narrative of events aboard a British man-of-war during the turmoil of the Napoleonic Wars, Billy Budd, Sailor is a nautical recasting of the Fall, a parable of good and evil, a meditation on justice and political governance, and a searching portrait of three extraordinary men. The passion it has aroused in its readers over the years is a measure of how deeply it addresses some of the fundamental questions of experience that every age must reexamine for itself. The selection in this volume represents the best of Melville's shorter fiction, and uses the most authoritative texts. The eight shorter tales included here were composed during Melville's years as a magazine writer in the mid 1850's and establish him, along with Hawthorne and Poe, as the greatest American story writer of his age. Several of the tales — Bartleby the Scrivener, Benito Cereno, The Encantadas, The Paradise of Bachelors and the Tartarus of Maids are acknowledged masterpieces of their genres. All show Melville a master of irony, point-of-view, and tone whose fables ripple out in nearly endless circles of meaning.

In 1843, after three years of voyaging in the South Seas, Melville signed up as an ordinary seaman on the man-of-war United States, and headed for home. What he observed on that trip formed the basis of White-Jacket, a success both as a story and as an expose of certain naval practices of which the public was only dimly aware. Melville's subtitle, The World in a Man-of-War, points to its broad theme: the autocratic, male regime aboard the Neversink is perhaps no more than a microcosm of pre-Civil War America. But under his scandalized liberalism, his desire to expose and to reform a barbaric system which reflects badly on the Declaration of Independence, runs an unspoken connection. The treatment meted out to the white men on the man-of-war is the same as that experienced by black slaves in every state. With hindsight, Melville's novel is double-edged. This is the only paperback edition currently available.

«Полный, неадаптированный текст произведения. Moby Dick 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 is Ishmael, the novel's narrator, ordinary sailor, and extraordinary reader. Digressive, allusive, vulgar, transcendent, the story Ishmael tells is above all an education: in the practice of whaling, in the art of writing. Expanding to equal his 'mighty theme' — not only the whale but all things sublime — Melville breathes in the world's great literature. Moby Dick is the greatest novel ever written by an American.»