This Norton Critical Edition presents three of Melville's most important short novels--Bartleby, The Scrivener; Benito Cereno; and Billy Budd. The texts are accompanied by ample explanatory annotation.

As his writing reflects, Melville was extraordinarily well read. "Contexts" offers selections from works that influenced Melville's writing of these three short novels, including, among others, Ralph Waldo Emerson's "The Transcendental-ist" and Amasa Delano's Narrative of Voyages aud Travels.Johannes Dietrich Bergmann, H.Bruce Franklin, and Robert M.Cover provide overviews of Melville's probable sources.

Preface

Acknowledgments

The Texts of Melville's Short Novels

Bartleby, The Scrivener

Benito Cereno

Billy Budd, Sailor

Contexts

BARTLEBY, THE SCRIVENER

Johannes Dietrich Bergmann "Bartleby" and "The Lawyer's Story"

H. Bruce Franklin Bartleby: The Ascetic's Advent

Ralph Waldo Emerson The Transcendentalist

BENITO CERENO

Amasa Delano A Narrative of Voyages and Travels, Chapter XVIII

Herman Melville [On Cannibals]

BILLY BUDD

Nathaniel Hawthorne [Hawthorne and Melville in Liverpool]

Robert M. Cover From Justice Accused

Criticism

BARTLEBY, THE SCRIVENER

Leo Marx Melville's Parable of the Walls

Elizabeth Hardwick From Bartleby in Manhattan

Dan McCall The Reliable Narrator

BENITO CERENO

Yvor Winters and Darrel Abel On Benito Cereno: Opposing Views

Epigraph to Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man

Frederick Busch [Captain Delano]

Laurie Robertson-Lorant [Melville]

C. L. R. James [The Yankee Captain]

Glenn C. Mtschuler Whose Foot on Whose Throat? A Re-Examination of Melville's Benito Cereno

Allan Moore Emery The Topicality of Depravity in "Benito Cereno"

Robert Lowell Benito Cereno

Michael Rogin [Mutiny and Slave Revolt]

Richard E. Ray * "Benito Cereno": Babo as Leader

BILLY BUDD

Hershel Parker From The Plot of Billy Budd and the Politics of Interpreting It

Paul Bergman and Michael Asinow [On the Movie Billy Budd]

Tom Goldstein * Once Again, "Billy Budd" Is Standing ;Frial

Carolyn L. Karcher [Melville and Revolution]

Joyce Sparer Adler From Billy Budd and Melville's Philosophy of War

Mervyn Cooke [Homosexuality in Billy Budd]

Robert K. Martin Jr. [Is Vere a Hero?]

Ann Douglas [Father and Son in Billy Budd]

Thomas Mann [On Billy Budd]

Albert Camus [Melville's Lyricism]

Thomas J. Scorza * An Inside Narrative

Gordon Teskey The Bible in Billy Budd

Hannah Arendt [Compassion and Goodness]

Pauline Kael Billy Budd

NewtonArvin [Departure]

Selected Bibliography