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Herman Melville

13 free books by Herman Melville. 11 you can read right here.

Born 1819 in Manhattan · Died 1891 in New York City

writer, novelist, poet, essayist · United States · associated with Romanticism

Notable works: Moby-Dick

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Facts from Wikidata (Q4985), retrieved 2026-09-26.

Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall-Street
1853 · Read here →
Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War
Project Gutenberg ebook 12384 · Read here →
Benito Cereno
course edition cited: 2006 · Read here → · Assigned in 2 MIT courses
Billy Budd : And Other Prose Pieces
1924 · 1924 · Read here →
Israel Potter: His Fifty Years of Exile
1855 · Read here →
Moby-Dick
course edition cited: 2002 · Read here → · Assigned in 1 MIT course
Pierre; or The Ambiguities
1852 · Read here →
The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade
1857 · Read here →
The Piazza Tales
1856 · Read here →
Typee: A Romance of the South Seas
Read here →
White Jacket; Or, The World on a Man-of-War
1850 · Read here →
“The Try-Works.” Chapter 96 in Moby-Dick
course edition cited: 2003 · Read here → · Assigned in 1 MIT course
Moby-Dick : A Longman Critical Edition
course edition cited: 2009 · Read at melville.electroniclibrary.org ↗ · Assigned in 1 MIT course
Typee
1892 edition · Read at standardebooks.org ↗

Also by Herman Melville: read here

Redburn. His First Voyage Being the Sailor Boy Confessions and Reminiscences of the Son-Of-A-Gentleman in the Merchant Navy
Read here →
Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas
Read here →
Mardi, and a voyage thither, Vol. 1 (of 2)
Read here →
Typee
Read here →
Mardi, and a voyage thither, Vol. 2 (of 2)
Read here →
The Apple-Tree Table, and Other Sketches
Read here →
John Marr and Other Poems
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I and My Chimney
Read here →

Short stories and shorter works by Herman Melville

Benito Cereno
course edition cited: 2006 · Read here → · Assigned in 2 MIT courses
The Piazza Tales
1856 · Read here →

Quotes from Herman Melville’s books

Verified word for word in the text: each quote is copied exactly from the book’s text in this site’s reader (the Project Gutenberg e-text named under each book) and links to its passage; when this page was built, every quote was checked word for word against that text. How RedLectern is built.

Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall-Street

From Project Gutenberg e-text #11231 (public domain in the USA).

“I would prefer not to.”

— Spoken by a character

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“At present I would prefer not to be a little reasonable,” was his mildly cadaverous reply.

— Spoken by a character

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The Piazza Tales

From Project Gutenberg e-text #15859 (public domain in the USA).

“Follow your leader.”

— Spoken by a character · BARTLEBY

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Ah this slavery breeds ugly passions in man.

BARTLEBYRead in context →

All 11 quotes from The Piazza Tales →

Billy Budd : and other prose pieces

From Project Gutenberg e-text #76513 (public domain in the USA).

At the penultimate moment, his words, his only ones, words wholly unobstructed in the utterance, were these--‘God bless Captain Vere!’

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Moby-Dick

From Project Gutenberg e-text #2701 (public domain in the USA).

Call me Ishmael.

1. LoomingsRead in context →

White Jacket; Or, The World on a Man-of-War

From Project Gutenberg e-text #10712 (public domain in the USA).

And we Americans are the peculiar, chosen people—the Israel of our time; we bear the ark of the liberties of the world.

XXXVI. FLOGGING NOT NECESSARYRead in context →

In time of peril, like the needle to the loadstone, obedience, irrespective of rank, generally flies to him who is best fitted to command.

XXVII. SOME THOUGHTS GROWING OUT OF MAD JACK’S COUNTERMANDING HIS SUPERIOR’S ORDERRead in context →

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