The various prose sketches1 here reprinted were first published by Melville, some in Harper's and some in Putnam's magazines, during the years from 1850 to 1856. "Hawthorne and His Mosses," the only piece of criticism in this collection, is particularly interesting viewed in the light of Melville's friendship with Hawthorne while they were neighbors at Pittsfield, Massachusetts. The other sketches cover a variety of homely2 subjects treated by Melville with a fresh humor, richly phrased and curiously3 personal. Longer and in some ways more ambitious prose pieces written about this same time have been collected under the title of "Piazza4 Tales," but none of the sketches which follow have heretofore been gathered into a book. This has now been done not only to answer a growing demand for accessible reprints of Melville's work but also in response to the literary appeal of the sketches themselves. The author's phraseology and punctuation5 have, of course, been, followed exactly.
H. C.
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1 sketches | |
n.草图( sketch的名词复数 );素描;速写;梗概 | |
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2 homely | |
adj.家常的,简朴的;不漂亮的 | |
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3 curiously | |
adv.有求知欲地;好问地;奇特地 | |
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4 piazza | |
n.广场;走廊 | |
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5 punctuation | |
n.标点符号,标点法 | |
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