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Annoted Cover 2010-full-correct spine.indd - Penguin Group

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herMan Melville<br />

1819 – 1891, american<br />

Billy Budd and Other Stories<br />

Selected with an Introduction by<br />

Frederick Busch<br />

“Billy Budd, Sailor,” a classic<br />

confrontation between good and evil,<br />

is the story of an innocent young<br />

man unable to defend himself from<br />

wrongful accusations. Other selections<br />

include “Bartleby,” “The Piazza,” “The<br />

Encantadas,” “The Bell-Tower,” “Benito<br />

Cereno,” “The Paradise of Bachelors,” and<br />

“The Tartarus of Maids.”<br />

416 pp. 978-0-14-039053-7 $9.00<br />

The Confidence-Man<br />

Edited with an Introduction and Notes by<br />

Stephen Matterson<br />

Part satire, part allegory, part hoax, The<br />

Confidence-Man is a slippery metaphysical<br />

comedy set on April Fool’s Day aboard the<br />

Mississippi steamer Fidèle.<br />

400 pp. 978-0-14-044547-3 $13.00<br />

Israel Potter<br />

His Fifty Years of Exile<br />

Introduction and Notes by Robert S. Levine<br />

Based on the life of an actual soldier who<br />

claimed to have fought at Bunker Hill,<br />

Israel Potter is unique among Herman<br />

Melville’s books: a novel in the guise of a<br />

biography. In the story of Israel Potter’s<br />

fall from Revolutionary War hero to<br />

London peddler, Melville provides a<br />

portrait of the American Revolution as the<br />

rollicking adventure it really was.<br />

320 pp. 978-0-14-310523-7 $15.00<br />

herMan Melville<br />

Herman Melville was born in New York, the son of a merchant, and largely selfeducated.<br />

He started writing after having first sailed to Liverpool in 1839, where<br />

he joined the whaler Acushnet bound for the Pacific. Deserting ship the following<br />

year in the Marquesas, he made his way to Tahiti and Honolulu, returning as an<br />

ordinary seaman to Boston, where he was discharged in October 1844. Books<br />

based on these adventures, which include his masterpiece Moby-Dick, won him<br />

immediate success. However, this literary renown soon faded; his complexity<br />

increasingly alienated readers. Melville died virtually forgotten, and it was not<br />

until the 1920s that his reputation underwent the revision that has made him a<br />

key figure in American literature.<br />

P e n g u i n C l a s s i C s 165

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