Collected Works Melville, Herman: Complete Works | v.2.2 | Update 19 Mar 2016

[pynch]

This volume collects the complete writings of Herman Melville (1819–1891, wikipedia):



~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Typee: A Romance of the South Seas. (1846)

Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas. (1847)

Mardi: and A Voyage Thither. (1849)

Redburn: His First Voyage. (1849)

White-Jacket: or, The World in a Man-of-War. (1850)

Moby-Dick: or, The Whale. (1851)

Pierre: or, The Ambiguities. (1852)

Israel Potter: His Fifty Years of Exile. (1855)

The Piazza Tales (1856): The Piazza, Bartleby, Benito Cereno, The Lightning-Rod Man, The Encantadas; or, Enchanted Isles, The Bell-Tower

The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade. (1857)

Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War. (1866)

Clarel: A Poem and Pilgrimage in the Holy Land. (1876)

John Marr and Other Sailors with Some Sea Pieces. (1888)

Timoleon and Other Ventures in Verse. (1891)

The Apple-Tree Table, and Other Sketches (1922): The Apple-Tree Table, Jimmy Rose, I and my Chimney, The Paradise of Bachelors and The Tartarus of Maids, Cock-a-Doodle-Doo!, The Fiddler, Poor Man’s Pudding and Rich Man’s Crumbs, The Happy Failure, The ’Gees.

Billy Budd, and Other Prose Pieces (1924): Billy Budd, Sailor (An Inside Narrative), The Two Temples, Daniel Orme.

Weeds and Wildings, With a Rose or Two. (1924)

Essays: Fragments from a Writing Desk No. 1 & 2, Etchings of a Whaling Cruise, Authentic Anecdotes of “Old Zack,” Mr Parkman’s Tour, Cooper’s New Novel, A Thought on Book-Binding, Hawthorne and His Mosses.

Uncollected Poems: Marquis de Grandvin at the Hostelry, Naples in the Time of Bomba, Immolated, Madam Mirror, The Wise Virgins to Madam Mirror, The New Ancient of Days, The Rusty Man, Thy Aim, Thy Aim?, The Old Shipmaster and his Crazy Barn, Camoens, Camoens in the Hospital, Montaigne and his Kitten, Falstaffs Lament over Prince Hal, Shadow at the Feast, Merry Ditty of the Sad Man, Honor, Fruit and Flower Painter, The Medallion, Time’s Long Ago!, In the Hall of Marbles, Gold in the Mountain, In Shards the Sylvan Vases Lie, In the Jovial Age of Old, A Spirit Appeared to Me, Give Me the Nerve, My Jacket Old, In the Old Farm-House, To ——, A Battle Picture, Old Age in his Ailing, Hearts-of-Gold, Pontoosuce, Epistle to Daniel Shepherd, Inscription for the Slain at Fredericksburgh, The Admiral of the White, To Tom, Suggested by the Ruins of a Mountain-Temple in Arcadia, Puzzlement, The Continents, The Dust-Layers, A Rail Road Cutting near Alexandria in 1855, A Reasonable Constitution, Rammon, Ditty of Aristippus, In A Nutshell, Adieu.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The texts are sourced from Gutenberg, mostly. I’ve used the unexpurgated versions of Moby Dick and Typee and the 1962 text of Billy Budd, Sailor.

The formatting, italics, and diacritics have been checked and corrected by comparing the texts with the paper editions. Quotes are curly, footnotes are active, and fonts are embedded.

The collection is sorted chronologically by book publication. There are the usual inline tables of contents and links after each text/chapter to get back to the respective tables. The dates of first publication are noted.

But, er, complete it is not. (It is now. See update v.2.0.)

I haven’t included the poetry yet, as with its less than stellar reputation I wasn’t sure if it is worth the effort. I don’t want to lose any more sleep about it, so I decided that I’d like you to decide about its inclusion. Therefore I have set up a poll here.

Best regards,
pynch.

Update | v.1.1 | 21 Jul 2013

Fixed a file that was too big for Sony readers. Uploaded Version 1.1.

Update | v.2.0 | 27 Jul 2013

Added five volumes of poetry, a bunch of uncollected poems, and an alphabetical index of the poems. Uploaded Version 2.0.

Update | v.2.1 | 14 Dec 2014

Proofed The Piazza Tales and The Apple-Tree Table and Other Sketches against the first editions and “Billy Budd, Sailor” against the 1962 University of Chicago Press edition (Harrison Hayford and Merton M Sealts, Jr., eds.). About 700 mistakes and variants were corrected.

Update | v.2.2 | 19 Mar 2016

Proofed Moby-Dick against the 2002 paperback of the Norton Critical Edition, 2nd edition 1988 (Hershel Parker & Harrison Hayford, eds.). About 1100 mistakes and variants were corrected.

Previous Download Count: 1433.

This work is assumed to be in the Life+70 public domain OR the copyright holder has given specific permission for distribution. Copyright laws differ throughout the world, and it may still be under copyright in some countries. Before downloading, please check your country's copyright laws. If the book is under copyright in your country, do not download or redistribute this work.

To report a copyright violation you can contact us here.

[Spinnenmonat]

I love this kind of surprise. Thank you so much Pynch. Would you please give us some hints of your next project?

[pynch]

Originally Posted by Spinnenmonat

I love this kind of surprise. Thank you so much Pynch. Would you please give us some hints of your next project?

It will be French, with one of the books in three different versions.

[anacreon]

Originally Posted by pynch

It will be French, with one of the books in three different versions.

Baudelaire? But you just said you're not into poetry. Many thanks for the Melville. I voted nay, because though I'm into poetry, I'm not into everything, and I think your work is such a pleasure for so many, you should at least enjoy it, and invest into what appeals to you (so many books, so little time). You could just call it "complete prose" and be done with it

Best regards.

[pynch]

One of the html files was too big for Sony readers. Fixed and updated.

Originally Posted by anacreon

Baudelaire?

It seems that my hints were too easy.

Originally Posted by anacreon

But you just said you're not into poetry.

Not that much, that’s right, but C.B. is different. How can one not like Les Fleurs du Mal?

Originally Posted by anacreon

Many thanks for the Melville. I voted nay, because though I'm into poetry, I'm not into everything, and I think your work is such a pleasure for so many, you should at least enjoy it, and invest into what appeals to you (so many books, so little time). You could just call it "complete prose" and be done with it

Best regards.

I rarely read all of the books of an author, but usually don’t mind including everything in the epubs. It’s just that his poetry seems to be especially sub-par. And I doubt that I will ever touch Typee or Omoo, but I love Bartleby and Billy Budd.

[anacreon]

I'm very pleased that you should be working on Baudelaire, my favorite French poet. Of course I have ÉFÉLÉ's good epubs for "Les fleurs du mal" (1857 and 1861), and the ok Gutenberg for "les épaves", but I have only pitiful pdfs for the Salons and Journaux Intimes, unreadable on my devices. Ebooks libres et gratuits's pdf of "le spleen de Paris" is readable on the kobo aura, but not comfortable for my eyes. So... I'm really looking forward to your version.

[Susie86]

Thank you very much for this collection and all the hard work that went into it. I'm just reading The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach and Melville takes an importaint role within this novel, at least in chapters 6 and 7: A young athlete finds an unknown lecture from Melville in his school's library and becomes an importaint Melville scolar within the following years. Later in the novel we see that this guy, Guert Affenlight is his name, is the president of the college where the two main protagonists of the book - Mike Schwartz and Henry Skimshader - became friends. I'm really happy that I can look into Melville right now, he plays such an important role within Harbach's novel that I got very curious about his works.

[Prestidigitweeze]

Les Fleurs du Mal's an excellent choice -- far better than Poe, and I happen to love Poe! Who's next, Jules Laforgue?

When I was a teenager, I once typed multiple letters requesting a bilingual edition of the complete poems of Jules Laforgue, worded each letter differently, sent it to a friend or family member at a different address, and instructed each person to sign their letter with a fake name and send it to New Directions. The idea was to make publisher James Laughlin think there was a massive Laforgue craze all across America, so that he'd have no choice but to publish an edition of the complete poems as he'd done with Flowers of Evil (as it were).

It didn't work, of course.

Laughlin wrote to me personally to say why he was against the idea. According to him, William Jay Smith's versions weren't good enough -- "more Smith than Laforgue" -- and neither were anyone else's -- not even Pound's! This despite the fact that Eliot spent most of his career doing fabulous impressions of Laforgue (and admitting as much in interviews) which suggest that good translations in English are quite possible. Anyone who doubts it should compare "Complainte des pianos" to "Prufrock" -- they're similar in tone and meter, as Eliot was the first to point out.

I think I still have Laughlin's letter in a box somewhere.

[pynch]

Originally Posted by Prestidigitweeze

[I]The idea was to make publisher James Laughlin think there was a massive Laforgue craze all across America,

I seem to remember the reports over here in Europe in the 1970s: Americans in the streets, at rodeos, in baseball stadiums, etc. who suddenly started reciting French poetry in unison. Those were the days.

Originally Posted by Prestidigitweeze

[I]Les Fleurs du Mal's an excellent choice -- far better than Poe, and I happen to love Poe! Who's next, Jules Laforgue?

My original idea was to make a multilingual version of the Fleurs du Mal (inspired, of course, by Jellby’s Divina Commedia), but unfortunately none of the English translations are PD yet outside of the US. So I’ve settled for the complete French works, for now.

Laforgue? Perhaps when it’s trending on Twitter again.

[Prestidigitweeze]

Oh, dirty manatee membranes! I thought you might be able to use the translation of Les Fleurs by Dillon and Millay but now see the first edition was published in 1936.

[Jellby]

Originally Posted by Prestidigitweeze

I thought you might be able to use the translation of Les Fleurs by Dillon and Millay but now see the first edition was published in 1936.

Date of publication matters only in the US, outside the US it's just the death of the creator (that's generally speaking).

[pynch]

After a majority of 19 over 5 voted for the inclusion of Melville’s poetry, I have added it to the collection. There’s also an alphabetical index.

I would greatly appreciate if you could drop a note here in case you intend to read any of them.

[medard]

I intend to read some of them them, Mister. I promise.

[pynch]

Proofed The Piazza Tales and The Apple-Tree Table and Other Sketches against the first editions and “Billy Budd, Sailor” against the 1962 University of Chicago Press edition (Harrison Hayford and Merton M Sealts, Jr., eds.).

About 700 mistakes and variants were corrected. Please let me know if you find any mistakes in these.

[pynch]

Proofed Moby-Dick against the 2002 paperback of the Norton Critical Edition, 2nd edition 1988 (Hershel Parker & Harrison Hayford, eds.). About 1100 mistakes and variants were corrected.

This one’s for issybird and sun surfer.