A01=Herman Melville
albert camus
anthony trollope
arthur conan doyle
audio books on cd
Author_Herman Melville
beyond good and evil
books fiction
Category=FBC
dogs
edgar allan poe
elinor oliphant
emma jane austen
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ernest hemingway
for whom the bell tolls
george eliot
henry james
italo calvino
jack kerouac
james baldwin
james joyce
jules verne
mark twain
new york
oliver twist
on the road
one hundred years of solitude
portrait of a lady
raymond chandler
the fountainhead
the gilded age
the lost world
the stranger
the world at war
travel guide
under the volcano
war fiction
william faulkner
Product details
- ISBN 9780140431056
- Weight: 326g
- Dimensions: 129 x 198mm
- Publication Date: 26 Aug 1976
- Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Paperback
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Wellington Redburn is a fifteen-year-old from the state of New York, with only one dream - to run away to sea. However, when he does fulfil this long-held fantasy, he quickly finds that reality as a cabin boy is far harsher than he ever imagined. Mocked by the crew on board the Highlander for his weakness and bullied by the vicious and merciless sailor Jackson, Wellington must struggle to endure the long journey from New York to Liverpool. But when he does reach England, he is equally horrified by what he finds there: poverty, desperation and moral corruption. Inspired by Melville's own youthful experiences on board a cargo boat, this is a compelling tale of innocence transformed, through bitter experience, into disillusionment. A fascinating sea journal and coming-of-age tale, Redburn provides a unique insight into the mind of one of America's greatest novelists.
Herman Melville (1819-91) became in his late twenties a highly successful author of exotic novels based on his experiences as a sailor - writing in quick succession Typee, Omoo, Redburn and White-Jacket. However, his masterpiece Moby-Dick was met with incomprehension and the other later works which are now the basis of his reputation, such as Bartleby, the Scrivener and The Confidence-Man, were failures. Melville stopped writing fiction and the rest of his long life was spent first as a lecturer and then, for nineteen years, as a customs official in New York City. He was also the author of the immensely long poem Clarel, which was similarly dismissed. At the end of his life he wrote Billy Budd, Sailor which was published posthumously in 1924.
