Billy Budd, Sailor : Authorial Agency, Critical Provocation, and the Enduring Challenge of Hayford-Sealts

Abstract: The 1962 edition of Billy Budd, Sailor: ( An Inside Narrative ), edited by Harrison Hayford and Merton M. Sealts, Jr., contains their transformational analysis of Melville's stages of composition, the results of which inform their coded Genetic Text, the basis for all authoritative reading texts. At the core of Hayford-Sealts's accomplishment remains their account of the sequential emergence of Melville's evolving intentions—those compositional interventions that allowed them to distinguish between emergent draft stages. The challenge of Hayford-Sealts and the relatively recent appearance of major scholarly resources facilitate more expansive ways of understanding the evolution of the manuscript. The 2017 Northwestern-Newberry edition of Billy Budd , with its corrected Genetic Text, can inform and be augmented by an analysis of materials available within the fluid edition text found within the Melville Electronic Library (MEL)—that is, the reading text itself, the transcription of specific leaves with commentary, and digitally-produced manuscript leaves. The challenge of Hayford-Sealts and critical provocations stimulated by an interactive engagement with the resources of MEL's fluid text invite future scholars to engage those textual directions and indirections, visions and revisions that shape this unfinished masterwork.