Twenty-First Century
Twenty-First Century
Herman Melville.
Billy Budd, Sailor and Other Uncompleted Writings. The Writings of Herman Melville—Volume 13.
Edited by Harrison Hayford, Alma MacDougall, Robert Sandberg, and G. Thomas Tanselle. Historical note by Hershel Parker.
Evanston and Chicago: Northwestern University Press and The Newberry Library, 2017.
This is the final volume of the five-decades-long project to publish critical texts with notes and introductions of all the works of Melville, as well as his correspondence and journals. This fourth scholarly reading text of Billy Budd, Sailor is based on a corrected and modified version of the “Genetic Text” prepared by Hayford and Sealts, published in 1962. This reading text employs slightly modified editorial principles, described in depth in the note by Tanselle, from those followed in 1962. Tanselle calls attention to a leaf on which Melville appended in pencil what may be taken as a coda to the entire narrative:
“Here ends a story not unwarranted by what happens in this [one undeciphered word] world of ours—Innocence and infamy, spiritual depravity and fair repute.”
Melville Electronic Library Digital Edition of Billy Budd, Sailor (An Inside Narrative).
The Melville Electronic Library (MEL) launched its digital, fluid text edition online in 2019. A “fluid text” is any written work that exists in multiple versions, and the 351-leaf Billy Budd manuscript presents remnants of three overlapping versions and eight stages of composition. MEL’s Versions of Billy Budd edition is based on an independent inspection of the manuscript leaves and the digitally enhanced analysis of Melville’s myriad revisions. This is the fifth and most recent scholarly edition of the novella.
Drawing upon, testing, and augmenting the foundational scholarship of the 1962 Hayford-Sealts genetic text, MEL editors encoded, transcribed, and proofed the leaves over a nine-year period. The Reading Text (corrected for ease of reading and suitable for print circulation) preserves some of the manuscript’s revealing “ragged edges,” and it has been adopted by several publishers, including the most recent edition of the Norton Anthology of American Literature, Ignatius Press, and The Pennyroyal Press. Online, the lightly edited reading text’s marginal thumbnails are linked to each manuscript leaf and additional scholarly features, enhancing access to Melville’s creative process.
Herman Melville.
Billy Budd, Sailor.
Northampton, MA: The Pennyroyal Press, 2024.
Utilizing the Melville Electronic Library reading text with fourteen woodcut illustrations by Barry Moser, 50 copies were printed by Bradley Hutchinson at his letterpress workshop in Austin, Texas. The Moser illustrations were composed and cut into plank grain heartwood cherry in 2023. The typeface is Jonathan David Ross’s Pennyroyal, designed for Pennyroyal Press and inspired by the Doves types of Emery Walker and Cobden-Sanderson; bound by Jace Graf at Cloverleaf Studio in Austin. This exhibition not only inspired the Pennyroyal centenary edition but has also led to lasting friendships among its collaborators.
Herman Melville.
Three Tales of Melville: A Melville Bicentenary on the Anniversary of His Birth.
Printed by Karen Hanmer, Glenview, IL, 2019. Conservation Binding in Paper Wrap, Marie Oedel, Wolfeboro, NH, 2024.
The three tales include “Bartleby, The Scrivener,” “The Paradise of Bachelors and the Tartarus of Maids,” and Billy Budd, Sailor. It is Marie’s custom, as Publications Chair of The Grolier Club, to make a clamshell box as a gift to each curator of a members’ exhibit; Marie is the book conservator at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. She offered me a choice—a box or a book—as she had a set of sheets that she thought might be of interest to me. I chose the book to add to my collection. The paper cover is made from a sheet of Karli Frigge’s marbled paper, and the paper wrap is made from Katie MacGregor’s handmade paper. This is another example of the creative collaboration among Grolier members, friends, and staff that made this exhibition possible.