2010 0-7734-3707-X This work takes a new and decisive look at Herman Melville’s final work of prose fiction, Billy Budd, Sailor (An Inside Narrative). While exploring the novel’s textual, scholarly and critical history, Garner argues that Melville created two Billy Budds and that they exist as co-extensive narratives—one superimposed on the other, both tales occupying the same textual space, using the same words. These narratives operate in a shell-kernel relationship with the outside narrative providing cover for the nestled inside narrative.