Herman Melville

Pierre, Israel Potter, The Piazza Tales,
The Confidence-Man, Billy Budd, Uncollected Prose

The texts presented in this volume, with the exception of Billy Budd, Sailor, are those of the Northwestern-Newberry Edition of The Writings of Herman Melville, edited by Harrison Hayford, Hershel Parker, and G. Thomas Tanselle and published by the Northwestern University Press and The Newberry Library (Pierre in 1971, Israel Potter in 1983, The Confidence-Man in 1984, and The Piazza Tales and Other Prose Pieces, 1839-1860 forthcoming [as of 1984] ). Those texts were prepared according to the standards established by--and they have received the official approval of--the Center for Editions of American Authors of the Modern Language Association of America. (See its Statement of Editorial Principles and Procedures, revised edition, 1972.) The text of Billy Budd, Sailor is that edited by Harrison Hayford and Merton M. Sealts, Jr., and published by the University of Chicago Press in 1962.

The textual problems addressed in the Northwestern-Newberry Edition are relatively simple, although they differ somewhat from book to book and among the uncollected shorter pieces, depending upon whether there is more than one authoritative text of a given work. When there is only one text authorized by Melville, the main editorial problem, after the correction of obvious errors (whether by author, copyist, or typesetter), concerns wording that cannot be what Melville intended because it makes no sense or insufficient sense. Such wording must be emended, whenever possible, with wording that is more likely what Melville intended (and that could have been misread as the word originally printed). When there are two authoritative texts, it is also necessary to discriminate authorial from nonauthorial readings among the variants in the later of the two--to determine, that is, whether each of these variants is more likely Melville's own revision or a change made in the publisher's office or by the typesetter. The conservative policy followed by the Northwestern-Newberry editors in such cases is to keep the earlier reading unless there is compelling reason to believe that the later variant is Melville's.

For none of the four books in this volume is the manuscript Melville supplied to the publisher preserved (though twenty-six manuscript fragments, all discarded worksheets, do survive for The Confidence-Man), nor does a separate English edition offer (as was the case with Melville's earlier books) an additional text with possible authorial variants. Only The Confidence-Man had a separate English edition, and that edition was set from the American with no opportunity for Melville to make changes. Pierre and Israel Potter were published in England using imported American sheets issued with the imprint of Sampson Low, Son & Co., who also distributed in England the American edition of The Piazza Tales, on whose title page its firm name was included. Moreover, none of these four books had a later edition during Melville's lifetime (apart from the unauthorized Routledge 1855 London edition of Israel Potter). The basic text adopted by the Northwestern-Newberry editors is the one nearest Melville's manuscript: for Pierre and The Confidence-Man the first edition of each; for Israel Potter and The Piazza Tales(one piece excepted) the component texts as they first appeared in the numbers of Putnam's Monthly Magazine. The one exception is "The Piazza," which Melville wrote as the book's title piece and for which the basic text adopted, in the absence of a manuscript, is its original appearance in The Piazza Tales volume.

The first edition of Pierre was set from the manuscript Melville supplied (largely as copied by his sister Augusta and perhaps his wife) to Harper & Brothers, New York, who published it in the late summer of 1852 (on August 6, according to a contemporary record, although the first reviews appeared a week or so earlier). The textual problems here are simply the detection and correction of corrupt readings. Some are readily found and emended, but acute reading is required to recognize others, which once seen may or may not be easy to emend (see the note for 251.43).

The manuscript for The Confidence-Man was also supplied by Melville to his American publisher in fair copy prepared by his sister (and possibly his wife). The English edition was set from corrected proofs of the American; though differing at about one hundred points in wording and at scores in spelling, punctuation, and capitalization, it contains no changes made by Melville himself. The American edition (New York: Dix, Edwards, & Co., 1857) appeared, with unaccountable appropriateness, on April 1, and the English (Longman, Brown, Green, Longmans, & Roberts, 1857) two or three days later. The Northwestern-Newberry editors have corrected sixty-four obvious errors and made seventy-four other emendations, including such corrections of corrupt readings as "fraternal" for "paternal" (868.24) and "life. As elsewhere" for "life as elsewhere." (914.4-5). For other examples see the notes for 914.6, 918.30, 930.34, 1005.20, 1091.10, and 1103.7. Questionable or plainly corrupt readings for which no satisfactory emendations were found include "myth" (841.28), the repetition of "Piazza, Covent Garden" (987.25-26), "touch" (1100.38), and "this beats printing" (1105.29).

Israel Potter has two authoritative texts, the one first serialized in nine numbers of Putnam's Magazine (July 1854-March 1855), set from manuscripts Melville supplied, and the later book text, set from the magazine sheets. The book edition (New York: G. P. Putnam & Co., 1855) was published in the spring and was followed by two more impressions during 1855 with no significant variants. Comparison of the book text with that of the magazine installments shows one major omission (see note 605.11) and scores of minor changes, including needed corrections; but none of these appear to have been made by Melville. Apart from the deletion of the magazine subtitle "A FOURTH OF JULY STORY," which was most likely the publisher's addition in the first place, the one major authorial change was Melville's addition of the dedication to the Bunker Hill Monument, with its reference to the "tattered copy" of Israel Potter's autobiographical story from which he said--or rather admitted--"the present account has been drawn." Actually, this primary source book, Life and Remarkable Adventures of Israel R. Potter (Providence, 1824), as well as four others that Melville did not acknowledge, enabled the Northwestern-Newberry editors to locate and correct several errors in the basic Putnam's Magazine text that were worse than any caught and corrected by the Putnam editor and typesetters who produced the book text. These works are cited and examples given in the notes to this volume. A final source of later corrections by Melville (adopted by the Northwestern-Newberry editors)--rather curious ones in light of more serious ones he passed over--is a copy of Israel Potter in the Harvard Melville Collection; in it he penciled the change from "illy" to "ill" four times (at 456.17, 471.22, 490.2, and 561.21), changed "birth" to "berth" (531.12), and twice corrected "boquets" to "bouquets" (501.19 and 501.29).

In The Piazza Tales, the textual problems are more complex not only because there are two authoritative texts of each piece (except "The Piazza")--that of Putnam's Magazine, set from Melville's manuscript, and that of the book--but also because Melville himself revised the magazine texts, as he evidently had not done for Israel Potter. In letters to Dix & Edwards (Jan. 7 and 19, 1856) he requested copies of the magazines so he could "do my share of the work without delay"; and in sending the revised copies he reported, "I have prepared for republication the Articles agreed upon. . . . Aside from ordinary corrections, some few other improvements have been made, and a desirable note or two added." In another letter, when returning proofs (March 24, 1856), he complained, "There seems to have been a surprising profusion of commas in these proofs. I have struck them out pretty much; but hope that someone who understands punctuation better than I do, will give the final hand to it." Comparison of the two texts shows that nothing was done to eliminate the "profusion of commas," and it is clear that Melville did not have control of the many changes in punctuation, spelling, and capitalization that appear in the book; but an editor may be tempted, in light of the earlier letters, to accept most of the many verbal revisions as Melville's own--as constituting the "some few improvements" he made. The Northwestern-Newberry editors, however, conservatively hold to the magazine versions, their basic texts, unless the changes in wording are convincingly authorial rather than the sort of "improvement" that a house editor might make or changes a compositor might unconsciously blunder into. Too many seem to be "softenings" of earlier wording--apparently made by someone at Dix & Edwards to avoid offense to readers. One of these, involving the disappearance of the grub-man's name, Mr. Cutlets, in "Bartleby the Scrivener," is discussed in the note for 670.9.

Melville's uncollected prose in this volume is divided into two parts, one of tales and the other of articles and reviews, and is arranged chronologically by order of composition (reconstructed, as close as is possible so far, by Merton M. Sealts, Jr., for the Northwestern-Newberry Edition). The uncollected tales--apart from "The Two Temples" and Billy Budd, Sailor--do not survive in manuscript and were not reprinted by Melville. The authoritative texts are therefore the first printings: "Fragments from a Writing Desk" in the Democratic Press, and Lansingburgh Advertiser (May 4, and May 18, 1839); "The Happy Failure" in Harper's New Monthly Magazine (July 1854); "The Fiddler" in Harper's (Sept. 1854); "Cock-A-Doodle-Doo!" in Harper's (Dec. 1853); "Poor Man's Pudding and Rich Man's Crumbs" in Harper's (June 1854); "The Paradise of Bachelors and the Tartarus of Maids" in Harper's (Apr. 1855); "Jimmy Rose" in Harper's (Nov. 1855); "The 'Gees" in Harper's (Mar. 1856); "I and My Chimney" in Putnam's Monthly Magazine (Mar. 1856); and "The Apple-Tree Table" in Putnam's (May 1856). Neither is there a manuscript or other authoritative text for the article "Authentic Anecdotes of 'Old Zack,' " except the text printed in Yankee Doodle, II (July 24, July 31, Aug. 7, Aug. 14, Aug. 21, Aug. 28, and Sept. 11, 1847), pp. 152, 165, 167, 172, 188, 199, 202, and 229. The editorial work in each of these pieces, then, is of the same kind as in Pierre and The Confidence-Man: correcting obvious errors and identifying, and emending if possible, any corrupt readings.

The manuscript for "The Two Temples," which Melville submitted (in his sister Augusta's copyist hand) to Putnam's, was rejected and remained unpublished during his lifetime. It is now in the Melville Collection of the Houghton Library of Harvard University, and is the basic text for the Northwestern-Newberry edition. For all five of the reviews the basic texts are the printer's copy manuscripts preserved (in the Duyckinck Collection of the New York Public Library) among the papers of Evert A. and George L. Duyckinck, in whose New York Literary World they were published: "Etchings of a Whaling Cruise" on March 6, 1847; "Mr Parkman's Tour" on March 31, 1849; "Cooper's New Novel" on April 28, 1849; "A Thought on Book-Binding" on March 16, 1850; and "Hawthorne and His Mosses" on August 17 and August 24, 1850. In no instance did the editors adopt, as Melville's own revision, the variants in the Literary World texts. Many are simply misreadings of the manuscript, as well as deliberate editorial and compositorial alterations. Most notorious is the flattening misreading "same madness" for "sane madness" in "Hawthorne and His Mosses"--one at which Mrs. Hawthorne reported Melville's vexation. Each of the manuscripts also contains some misreadings by the copyist (such as the evident misreading of "fraternal" as "paternal" by Melville's sister Augusta) and various errors of Melville's own. The manuscript of "Hawthorne and His Mosses" reveals Evert A. Duyckinck's patent editorial interference with the text as Melville originally wrote it (and as his wife copied it), as well as Melville's own revisions, some of them made evidently under Duyckinck's persuasion.

The Billy Budd manuscript, left unfinished as a semi-final draft at Melville's death, has not yet been prepared by the Northwestern-Newberry editors [as of 1984] according to the principles they follow in editing Melville's other works. The text presented in this volume, therefore, is the "reading text" edited by Hayford and Sealts, who have made the most thorough analysis of the manuscript to date. The first publication of Billy Budd was an edition prepared by Raymond Weaver in 1924 (revised by him in 1928). Weaver prepared a "reading text" that was as near as he could make it to what he judged Melville would have wanted a publisher to print, but not following in every detail what is in the manuscript. Weaver found that in many details Melville's intention cannot be ascertained because of "the state of the manuscript." F. Barron Freeman prepared a "literal text" in 1948, attempting, not always successfully, to report in every detail exactly what Melville put on the paper, including the revisions, in a way that would account for all the writing of any sort that appears in the manuscript. It was an edition for the scholar, not a finished narrative for the general reader. Freeman's and Weaver's texts each suffered the limitations of its chosen method, and each had its individual shortcomings and errors. Because no single text can accommodate both Weaver's and Freeman's objectives, Hayford and Sealts prepared two separate texts: one a "genetic text," the other a "reading text" based on it. The divergences between the principles followed by Hayford and Sealts in their "reading text" (as stated in their "Textual Notes," pp. 213 ff.) and those established in the completed volumes of the Northwestern-Newberry Edition are minor as to treatment of wording; thus differences in the wording of the eventual Northwestern-Newberry edition are likely to result merely from normal and necessary judgmental differences in the application of principles to individual problems. There will be greater divergence in the treatment of the spelling and punctuation. The Northwestern-Newberry editors do not follow the policy Hayford and Sealts adopted: "His [Melville's] inconsistent spelling, capitalization, hyphenation, paragraphing, and punctuation . . . have here been standardized--within the limits imposed by his own characteristic syntax--in accordance with present-day usage."

The standards for American English continue to fluctuate and in some ways were conspicuously different in earlier periods from what they are now. In nineteenth-century writings, for example, a word might be spelled in more than one way, even in the same work, and such variations might be carried into print. Commas were sometimes used expressively to suggest the movements of voice, and capitals were sometimes meant to give significances to a word beyond those it might have in its uncapitalized form. Since modernization would remove such effects, this volume (that is, all its text except Billy Budd) preserves the spelling, punctuation, capitalization, and wording of the Northwestern-Newberry Edition, which strives to be as faithful to Melville's usage as surviving evidence permits. It also contains the original tables of contents despite their inconsistencies with the chapter headings found in the body of the texts.

The texts in this volume follow exactly the Northwestern-Newberry texts of Pierre (first printing), Israel Potter (first printing), The Piazza Tales and Other Prose Pieces, 1839-1860 (page proofs), and The Confidence-Man (first printing), with four exceptions: in Pierre, "nor" replaces "not" at 104.4, "nether" replaces "nearer" at 127.28, and the sentence "And he . . . groping." is properly placed in the paragraph at 420.10; and in The Confidence-Man, "throwing" replaces "thowing" at 866.8. (These corrections will be made in future printings of the Northwestern-Newberry texts.) The text of Billy Budd, Sailor follows exactly that of the University of Chicago Press edition (seventh printing). The present edition is concerned only with representing the texts of these editions; it does not attempt to reproduce features of the typographic design--such as the display capitalization of chapter openings. In this volume the reader has the results of the most detailed scholarly efforts thus far made to establish the texts of Pierre, Israel Potter, The Piazza Tales, The Confidence-Man, Melville's uncollected tales, articles, and reviews, and his last and never quite finished work, Billy Budd, Sailor.

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