The Melville Collection

3 primary works

Mardi

by Herman Melville

Published 1 January 1983

The novel that prepared Melville to write Moby Dick

Redburn

by Herman Melville

Published 1 December 1957

Redburn is a fictional narrative of a boy's first voyage, based loosely on Melville's own first voyage to and from Liverpool in 1839. Hastily composed and little esteemed by its author, Redburn was more highly thought of by his critics, who saw it regaining the ground of popular sea stories like Typee and Omoo.

Melville so disliked the novel that he submitted it to his publisher without polishing it. This scholarly edition corrects a number of errors that have persisted in subsequent editions. Based on collations of the editions published during his lifetime, it incorporates corrections made in the English edition and emendations made by the present editors.

As with all the books in the Northwestern-Newberry series, this edition of Redburn is an Approved Text of the Center for Editions of American Authors (Modern Language Association of America).

White Jacket

by Herman Melville

Published August 1966

Herman Melville wrote "White-Jacket; or, The World in a Man-of-War "during two months of intense work in the summer of 1849. He drew upon his memories of naval life, having spent fourteen months as an ordinary seaman aboard a frigate as it sailed the Pacific and made the homeward voyage around Cape Horn.
Already that same summer Melville had written" Redburn, " and he regarded the books as "two "jobs, " which I have done for money--being forced to it, as other men are to sawing wood." The reviewers were not as hard on "White-Jacket "as Melville himself was. The English liked its praise of British seamen. The Americans were more interested in Melville's attack on naval abuses, particularly flogging, and his advocacy of humanitarian causes. Soon Melville was acclaimed the best sea writer of the day.
Part autobiography, part epic fiction, "White-Jacket" remains a brilliantly imaginative social novel by one of the great writers of the sea. This text of the novel is an Approved Text of the Center for Editions of American Authors (Modern Language Association of America).