Storyweb: Storytime For Grownups

This week on StoryWeb: Herman Melville’s novella Billy Budd, Sailor. While “Bartleby, the Scrivener” and Moby-Dick get a lot of attention (and are taught frequently in high school and college classes), fans of Herman Melville’s work think a lot about a piece he was writing at the end of his life. Though Melville had been working on the novella Billy Budd, Sailor for the last five years of his life, it appears that he may not have finished it when he died in 1891. It’s surprising that Melville had been working on the novella for such a long time. Earlier in his life, he was known for the extremely rapid pace at which he wrote. For example, he wrote the mammoth Moby-Dick in just eighteen months – an epic novel that was about six times longer than Billy Budd. So it’s odd that Melville would spend so much time on one piece – and still leave it unfinished. Also puzzling is Melville’s motivation in writing Billy Budd at all. After he published Moby-Dick in 1851, he went on to write three other novels – Pierre; or,