Benito Cereno, one of Melville's most enduring and intriguing works, was first published in Putnam's Monthly in October, November, and December of 1855. Melville later collected it in The Piazza Tales (1856), a collection that also included Bartleby, the Scrivener and The Bell-Tower. Benito Cereno is variously called a short story, a tale, and a short novel; it is thirty-four thousand words long, quite short for a novel, but too long to be conventionally designated a short story. What it lacks in length, however, it more than makes up for in depth, focus, and complexity.
Melville's source for Benito Cereno was Chapter 18 of Amasa Delano's Narrative of Voyages and Travels (1817), in...
