The Story Archive

Billy Budd

Herman Melville · 1924 CE · Novel · Modern / American · Victorian

Pressed off a merchantman into a British warship in the year of the great mutinies, a young foretopman is loved by the crew and marked out by the master-at-arms, who watches him with unaccountable hatred. Billy's one flaw is a stammer that seizes him under strong feeling, and when the accusation comes he is in his captain's cabin. Left unpublished at Melville's death in 1891 and printed only in 1924, it is his last word on law and innocence.

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