Billy Budd-Herman Melville

Journey into the Interior of the Earth (Version 2) by Jules Verne.A German scientist discovers an ancient runic message, which when translated proves to be a map to the center of a hollow Earth! The professor and his nephew then embark on a dangerous adventure down an Icelandic volcano to explore an unknown world in the interior of the Earth.Featured on Moby Dick.Public-domain recording courtesy of LibriVox (librivox.org).This episode includes AI-generated content.

My Confession by Leo Tolstoy."My Confession" is a brief autobiographical story of Leo Tolstoy's struggle with a mid-life existential crisis of melancholia. It describes his search for answers to the profound questions "What will come of my life?" and "What is the meaning of life?", without answers to which life, for him, had become "impossible." Tolstoy reflects on the arc of his philosophical life until then: his childhood abandonment of his Russian orthodox faith; his mastery of strength, will, power, and reason; and how, after he had achieved tremendous financial success and social status, life to him seemed meaningless. After despairing of his attempts to find answers in science, philosophy, eastern wisdom, and his fellow men of letters, he describes his turn to the wisdom of the common people and his attempts to reconcile their instinctive faith with the dictates of his reason.Featured on Moby Dick.Public-domain recording courtesy of LibriVox (librivox.org).This episode includes AI-generated content.

Bartleby the Scrivener, A Story of Wall Street. by Herman Melville."Bartleby the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street" is a short story by Herman Melville. The story first appeared, anonymously, in Putnam's Magazine in two parts. The first part appeared in November 1853, with the conclusion published in December 1853. It was reprinted in Melville's The Piazza Tales in 1856 with minor textual alterations. The work is said to have been inspired, in part, by Melville's reading of Emerson, and some have pointed to specific parallels to Emerson's essay, "The Transcendentalist." The story has been adapted twice: once in 1970, starring Paul Scofield, and again in 2001, starring Crispin Glover.Featured on Moby Dick.Public-domain recording courtesy of LibriVox (librivox.org).This episode includes AI-generated content.

Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War by Herman Melville."Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War" is the first book of poems by the American author Herman Melville.Featured on Moby Dick.Public-domain recording courtesy of LibriVox (librivox.org).This episode includes AI-generated content.

Selections from Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War by Herman Melville.Published in 1866, Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War is a collection of poems about the Civil War by Herman Melville. Many of the poems are inspired by second- and third-hand accounts from print news sources (especially the Rebellion Record) and from family and friends. A handful of trips Melville took before, during, and after the war provide additional angles of vision into the battles, the personalities, and the moods of war. In an opening note, Melville describes his project not so much as a systematic chronicle (though many of the individual poems refer to specific events) but as a kind of memory piece of national experience. The “aspects” to which he refers in the title are as diverse as “the moods of involuntary meditation—moods variable, and at times widely at variance.”Featured on Moby Dick.Public-domain recording courtesy of LibriVox (librivox.org).This episode includes AI-generated content.

Apple-Tree Table, and Other Sketches by Herman Melville.A collection of short stories by Herman Melville, including the title story The Apple-Tree Table, I and My Chimney, The Happy Failure, and several others.Featured on Moby Dick.Public-domain recording courtesy of LibriVox (librivox.org).This episode includes AI-generated content.

Encantadas or Enchanted Isles by Herman Melville.The Encantadas or Enchanted Isles is a novella by American author Herman Melville. First published in Putnam's Magazine in 1854, it consists of ten philosophical "Sketches" on the Encantadas, or Galápagos Islands. It was collected in The Piazza Tales in 1856. The Encantadas was to become the most critically successful of that collection. All of the stories are replete with symbolism reinforcing the cruelty of life on the Encantadas.Featured on Moby Dick.Public-domain recording courtesy of LibriVox (librivox.org).This episode includes AI-generated content.

Benito Cereno by Herman Melville.On an island off the coast of Chile, Captain Amaso Delano, sailing an American sealer, sees the San Dominick, a Spanish slave ship, in obvious distress. Capt. Delano boards the San Dominick, providing needed supplies, and tries to learn from her aloof and disturbed captain, Benito Cereno, the story of how this ship came to be where she is.Featured on Moby Dick.Public-domain recording courtesy of LibriVox (librivox.org).This episode includes AI-generated content.

Piazza Tales by Herman Melville.A collection of six short stories by American writer Herman Melville, published in May 1856. Except for the newly written title story, "The Piazza," all of the stories had appeared in Putnam's Monthly between 1853 and 1855. The collection includes what has long been regarded as three of Melville's most important achievements in the genre of short fiction, "Bartleby, the Scrivener", "Benito Cereno", and "The Encantadas", his sketches of the Galápagos Islands. (Billy Budd, arguably his greatest piece of short fiction, would remain unpublished in his lifetime.) One should note that the era's prevalent racism occasionally surfaces, as in describing blacks as "indisputable inferiors", to be found in "Benito Cereno".Featured on Moby Dick.Public-domain recording courtesy of LibriVox (librivox.org).This episode includes AI-generated content.

Bartleby The Scrivener by Herman Melville.This episode includes AI-generated content.