Billy Budd and other Prose Pieces

Billy Budd is the final novel from legendary author Herman Melville. Published posthumously almost thirty years after his death, the novel is renowned for its richness of character and its thematic ambiguity.

Melville couches his tale of morality inside an exciting nautical adventure set during the tumultuous times of the Napoleonic Wars. The novel follows the titular Billy Budd, a handsome and charismatic sailor conscripted aboard a British Man 'O War named Bellipotent. When one of the seni...