Melville's Short Novels (Norton Critical Editions)

Rating:
Summary: great edition here, footnoted text and relevant criticism
Review: This book includes both the text of Melville's short works (Bartleby, Benito Cereno, and Billy Budd)-approx 175 pages, and approx 225 pages of contexts (which are just what they sound like, historical background regarding each work, something I find invaluable when reading books written long before I was born) and literary criticism (generally interesting and almost always opened my eyes to new layers of meaning in Melville's writing.)
Invaluable for any reader of 19th century american fiction, college undergrad or grad student.

If you're not a student (I'm not) the background on Melville and his work is incredibly interesting and you will definitely come away with a new understanding of the man, his mind, his writing, and his relevance to all American Fiction. Oh yeah: and it's easy to read, to boot.

Rating:
Summary: borrring
Review: this book was extremely boring. Good story line though. Maybe Melville should have stopped after his bad review of M.D.
Billy Budd has many symbolic meanings but just never could keep my interest. It was as if Melville tried to fit in too much symbolism and did not pay enough attention to the story itself.