Billy Budd : and other prose pieces by Herman Melville
"Billy Budd : and other prose pieces" by Herman Melville is a collection of prose pieces written in the late 19th century. Anchored by the short nautical novel Billy Budd, Foretopman, it centers on an innocent young sailor drawn into a moral conflict aboard a British warship during the age of mutiny, with the enigmatic master-at-arms John Claggart and the austere Captain Vere shaping his fate. Surrounding sketches and essays deepen Melville’s
late-career preoccupations, but the signature tale probes innocence, authority, and latent malevolence at sea. The opening of the volume frames the title narrative: an editorial note and preface place the story in 1797 amid the Spithead and Nore mutinies, then introduce the archetype of the “Handsome Sailor” before focusing on Billy Budd, a foundling foretopman impressed from the merchantman Rights-of-Man into H.M.S. Indomitable. We meet Captain “Starry” Vere, an intellectual, self-contained commander, and the ship’s master-at-arms, John Claggart, whose covert antipathy toward Billy grows behind a courteous front. Early incidents show Billy’s natural goodness and naiveté—his effect as a peacemaker, his awe at shipboard discipline, and his failure to suspect malice—even as an old sailor (the Dansker) warns him that “Jemmy Legs” is “down on” him. Tension builds through small episodes: a soup-spilling scene with Claggart’s ambiguous compliment, petty harassments, and a secret nighttime approach by an afterguardsman hinting at a seditious “gang” and offering guineas—an overture Billy angrily rejects—while Claggart’s alternating smiles and hostile flashes suggest a deepening, mysterious enmity. (This is an automatically generated summary.)
Read or download for free
| How to read | Url | Size | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Read now! | https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/76513.html.images | 790 kB | |||
| EPUB3 (E-readers incl. Send-to-Kindle) | https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/76513.epub3.images | 589 kB | |||
| EPUB (older E-readers) | https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/76513.epub.images | 585 kB | |||
| Kindle | https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/76513.kf8.images | 1.4 MB | |||
| older Kindles | https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/76513.kindle.images | 1.3 MB | |||
| Plain Text UTF-8 | https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/76513.txt.utf-8 | 710 kB | |||
| Download HTML (zip) | https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/76513/pg76513-h.zip | 1.0 MB | |||
| There may be more files related to this item. | |||||
Similar Books
About this eBook
| Author | Melville, Herman, 1819-1891 |
|---|---|
| Editor | Weaver, Raymond M. (Raymond Melbourne), 1888-1948 |
| LoC No. | 24029693 |
| Title | Billy Budd : and other prose pieces |
| Original Publication | Edinburgh: Constable and Company Ltd, 1924. |
| Series Title | The works of Herman Melville, standard edition, volume XIII |
| Contents | Billy Budd, foretopman -- Other prose pieces: Daniel Orme. Hawthorne and his mosses, by a Virginian spending a July in Vermont. Cock-a-doodle-doo! or The crowing of the noble Cock Beneventano. The two temples. Poor man's pudding and rich man's crumbs. The happy failure, a story of the river Hudson. The fiddler. The paradise of bachelors and the tartarus of maids. Jimmy Rose. The 'Gees. I and my chimney. The apple-tree table, or original spiritual manifestations. Under the rose. The marquis de Grandvin. Portrait of a gentleman. To Major John Gentian, dean of the Burgundy club. Jack Gentian. Major Gentian and Colonel J. Bunkum. The Cincinnati. Fragment. Fragments from a writing-desk. |
| Credits | Chris Hapka and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from images made available by the HathiTrust Digital Library.) |
| Reading Level | Reading ease score: 66.7 (8th & 9th grade). Neither easy nor difficult to read. |
| Language | English |
| LoC Class | PS: Language and Literatures: American and Canadian literature |
| Subject | Sea stories |
| Subject | Ship captains -- Fiction |
| Subject | Executions and executioners -- Fiction |
| Subject | Sailors -- Fiction |
| Subject | Impressment -- Fiction |
| Category | Text |
| EBook-No. | 76513 |
| Release Date | Jul 16, 2025 |
| Copyright Status | Public domain in the USA. |
| Downloads | 599 downloads in the last 30 days. |
| Project Gutenberg eBooks are always free! | |