Project Gutenberg 2025-07-16 Public domain in the USA. 604 Melville, Herman 1819 1891 Melville, Hermann Weaver, Raymond M. (Raymond Melbourne) 1888 1948 Weaver, Raymond Melbourne Weaver, Raymond W. 24029693 Billy Budd : $b and other prose pieces $aEdinburgh :$bConstable and Company Ltd, $c1924. The works of Herman Melville, standard edition, volume XIII 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. 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.) "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.) https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015077951914 20241216095936melville 1924 gb Reading ease score: 66.7 (8th & 9th grade). Neither easy nor difficult to read. en Sea stories Ship captains -- Fiction Executions and executioners -- Fiction Sailors -- Fiction Impressment -- Fiction PS Text Category: Historical Novels Category: Novels Category: Classics of Literature Category: American Literature 809055 2025-07-30T08:32:02.163311 text/html 782894 2025-07-16T19:09:06 text/html 603048 2025-07-30T08:32:14.427208 application/epub+zip 599299 2025-07-30T08:32:04.490270 application/epub+zip 599300 2025-07-30T08:32:03.249310 application/epub+zip 1432667 2025-07-30T08:32:22.305191 application/x-mobipocket-ebook 1368276 2025-07-30T08:32:13.185233 application/x-mobipocket-ebook 726531 2025-07-30T08:32:01.083258 text/plain; charset=us-ascii 706635 2025-07-16T19:09:06 text/plain; charset=us-ascii 16589 2025-07-30T08:32:22.476156 application/rdf+xml 17353 2025-07-30T08:32:03.564255 image/jpeg 2178 2025-07-30T08:32:03.406255 image/jpeg 1092070 2025-07-30T08:32:02.232354 application/octet-stream application/zip Archives containing the RDF files for *all* our books can be downloaded at https://book.klll.cc/wiki/Gutenberg:Feeds#The_Complete_Project_Gutenberg_Catalog en.wikipedia en.wikipedia