Redburn

Herman Melville · 1849 CE · Novel · Modern / American · Victorian

The son of a bankrupt gentleman ships out of New York as a green hand on a Liverpool trader, carrying his dead father's guidebook to a city that has since rearranged itself. Shipmates make sport of his shooting jacket and his manners, and ashore he finds a dockside poverty that no amount of walking gets past. Melville wrote it fast and for money, calling it a beggarly thing; it is the plainest account he left of what going to sea actually cost.

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