The tales in this selection of Melville's shorter works were all written after the publication of "Moby-Dick" and after "Pierre", his first commercial failure. They are products of Melville's complex imagination in its maturity, possessing the power of his earlier work. Included here are "Bartleby", "The Encantadas", "Benito", "Cereno", "The Piazza" and one of Melville's masterpieces, the posthumously published "Billy Budd, Sailor".
