Herman Melville

Benito Cereno Herman Melville

Benito Cereno is a novella by Herman Melville, a fictionalized account about the revolt on a Spanish slavery ship captained by Don Benito Cereno, first published in three installments in Putnam's Monthly in 1855. The tale, slightly revised, was included in his short story collection The Piazza Tales that appeared in May 1856. According to scholar Merton M. Sealts, Jr., the story is 'an oblique comment on those prevailing attitudes toward blacks and slavery in the United States that would ultimately precipitate civil war between North and South.