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Within the taut power structure of life aboard ship, the young Redburn suffers the bullying and brutality of officers and men, and encounters below deck the dominating presence of the sickly and manic Jackson. In the Liverpool of the mid nineteenth century - the people 'as numerous as maggots in cheese' - he witnesses a writhing and squalid sort of half-life, and in company with the enigmatic and fugitive Harry Bolton he makes a fantastic whirlwind visit to London, where he finds Gomorrah to match the Sodom-like grime of Liverpool. With Redburn Melville achieved a new, spare and compelling idiom, a new mastery of his material, and in this, the first annotated edition of the book, Harold Beaver affords us a glimpse at the heart of its fscination and mystery.
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