The Complete Shorter Fiction

This volume gathers Melville's magazine tales and related short narratives of clerks, ships, and islands. Typical pieces include a Wall Street copyist who prefers not to, an American captain reading a revolt aboard a Spanish slaver, sketches of the Galapagos, a foundling sailor under naval law, and satires that pair a lawyers' dining club with a paper mill. Settings run from counting-houses and man-of-war decks to isolated commands and the Encantadas. The pieces are independent rather than chapters of one plot. The book is a collected shorter fiction, not a novel and not a life of the author.

Bound in red buckram blocked with a design by Bill Bragg. Silver slipcase.