Billy Budd, Sailor (An Inside Narrative), Reading Text and Genetic Text. Edited from the manuscript with introduction and notes by Harrison Hayford and Merton M. Sealts, Jr.

Herman Melville.

Billy Budd, Sailor (An Inside Narrative), Reading Text and Genetic Text. Edited from the manuscript with introduction and notes by Harrison Hayford and Merton M. Sealts, Jr.

Chicago:

The University of Chicago Press,

1962

The third scholarly transcription of the Billy Budd manuscript offered a broadened analysis and a new title. Weaver and F. Barron Freeman had taken the title Billy Budd Foretopman from a rejected title page. Instead, Hayford and Sealts used an expanded title and subtitle they found inscribed in the top margin of the first manuscript leaf. In the preface, the editors declare that the manuscript leaves had not been exhaustively studied and that no authoritative text of the ìsemi-final draftî left at Melvilleís death had been established. The ìGenetic Text,î the editors assert, is an ìexact transcriptionî of the words (if not the placement) on each leaf, with symbols indicating Melvilleís deletions and insertions. A note explains the genesis and development of the story through eight successive stages over five years. The ìReading Text,î an edited version of the Genetic Text, in the editorsí judgment most closely approximates ìMelvilleís final intention had a fair copy been made without further expansion or revision.î
In the same year, the University of Chicago Press also published the Hayford-Sealts reading text as a Phoenix paperback, with distinctive cover art, but without their groundbreaking genetic transcription.

From the Collection of William Palmer Johnston.