Tales, Poems, and Other Writings

“An amazing guided tour of the real Melville.” —Robert Sullivan“Bryant shows us the writer who, … even when he worked in obscurity and despair, was constantly changing, constantly revising, constantly experimenting, with new and more beautiful forms—a writer who had to keep moving, like a shark.” —Robert Sullivan, author of A Whale Hunt and The Meadowlands “No other anthology presents the extraordinary range of Melville’s writing across the second half of the nineteenth century or makes vivid Melville’s restless experiments in prose and poetry … the fullest picture of Melville’s achievement available in a single volume.” —Samuel Otter, professor of English, University of California at Berkeley“Bryant, a Melville expert with a clear and vigorous prose style, offers a fresh view of Melville… . Bryant’s well-chosen selections … support his assertion that Melville and his grand, complex, and soulful work need to be seen in a new light.” —Booklist

John Bryant is professor of English at Hofstra University. He has published five books on Melville and numerous articles. He has been the general editor of the Melville Society, one of the oldest and largest single-author societies in America, since 1990.