Encantadas: Or Enchanted Isles

The Encantadas by Herman Melville The Encantadas or Enchanted Isles is a novella by American author Herman Melville. First published in Putnam’s Magazine in 1854, it consists of ten philosophical Sketches on the Encantadas, or Galapagos Islands. It was collected in The Piazza Tales in 1856. The Encantadas was a success with the critics, but it did not help Melville out of his financial troubles. Like all of the stories later included in The Piazza Tales, Melville wrote The Encantadas while in financial straits after the failure of his novels Moby-Dick and Pierre: or, The Ambiguities. Putnam’s invited him to contribute material in 1852; he began to write, but never finished, a story on the abandoned wife Agatha Hatch Robertson that year, and submitted his famous work Bartleby, the Scrivener in 1853. We are delighted to publish this classic book as part of our extensive Classic Library collection. Many of the books in our collection have been out of print for decades, and therefore have not been accessible to the general public. The aim of our publishing program is to facilitate rapid access to this vast reservoir of literature, and our view is that this is a significant literary work, which deserves to be brought back into print after many decades. The contents of the vast majority of titles in the Classic Library have been scanned from the original works. To ensure a high quality product, each title has been meticulously hand curated by our staff. Our philosophy has been guided by a desire to provide the reader with a book that is as close as possible to ownership of the original work. We hope that you will enjoy this wonderful classic work, and that for you it becomes an enriching experience.