Acclaimed by critics as a masterpiece when a hastily transcribed version was finally published in 1924, it quickly took its place as a classic second only to Moby-Dick among Melville's works.

Melville's widow Elizabeth began to edit the manuscript for publication, but was not able to discern her husband's intentions at key points, even as to the book's title.

The court-martial convicts Billy following Vere's argument that any appearance of weakness in the officers and failure to enforce discipline could stir more mutiny throughout the Royal Navy.

"CH 26 The novel closes with three short chapters that present ambiguity: Composed fitfully over the last five years of his life, the novella Billy Budd represents Melville's return to prose fiction after three decades of only writing poetry.

Melville had a difficult time writing, describing his process with Moby-Dick as follows: "And taking a book off the brain is akin to the ticklish and dangerous business of taking an old painting off a panel—you have to scrape off the whole brain in order to get at it with due safety—and even then the painting may not be worth the trouble...."[3] The "scrapings" of Billy Budd lie in the 351 leaves of manuscript now in the Houghton Library at Harvard University.

The state of this manuscript has been described as "chaotic," with a bewildering array of corrections, cancellations, cut and pasted leaves, annotations by several hands, and with at least two different attempts made at a fair copy.

The composition proceeded in three general phases, as shown by the Melville scholars Harrison Hayford and Merton M. Sealts, Jr., who did an extensive study of the original papers from 1953 to 1962.

[5] After Melville's death, his wife Elizabeth, who had acted as his amanuensis on other projects, scribbled notes and conjectures, corrected spelling, sorted leaves and, in some instances, wrote over her husband's faint writing.

At some point Elizabeth Melville placed the manuscript in "a japanned tin box"[6] with the author's other literary materials, where it remained undiscovered for another 28 years.

She gave him access to all the records of Melville that survived in the family: manuscripts, letters, journals, annotated books, photographs, and a variety of other material.

F. Barron Freeman published a second text in 1948, edited on different principles, as Melville's Billy Budd (Cambridge: Harvard University Press).

In addition, some early versions did not follow his change of the name of the ship to Bellipotent (from the Latin bellum war and potens powerful), from Indomitable, as Melville called it in an earlier draft.

After its publication debut in England, and with critics of such caliber as D. H. Lawrence and John Middleton Murry hailing it as a masterpiece, Weaver changed his mind.

In relatively short order he and several other influential British literati had managed to canonize Billy Budd, placing it alongside Moby-Dick as one of the great books of Western literature.

Wholly unknown to the public until 1924, Billy Budd by 1926 had joint billing with the book that had just recently been firmly established as a literary masterpiece.

[1] In 1990 the Melville biographer and scholar Hershel Parker pointed out that all the early estimations of Billy Budd were based on readings from the flawed transcription texts of Weaver.

Some of these flaws were crucial to an understanding of Melville's intent, such as the famous "coda" at the end of the chapter containing the news account of the death of the "admirable" John Claggart and the "depraved" William Budd (25 in Weaver, 29 in Hayford & Sealts reading text, 344Ba in the genetic text) : Weaver: "Here ends a story not unwarranted by what happens in this incongruous world of ours—innocence and 'infirmary', spiritual depravity and fair 'respite'."

By this interpretation, Melville is opposing the scientific, rational systems of thought, which Claggart's character represents, in favor of the more comprehensive poetic pursuit of knowledge embodied by Billy.

[13] The centrality of Billy Budd's extraordinary good looks in the novella, where he is described by Captain Vere as "the young fellow who seems so popular with the men—Billy, the Handsome Sailor,"[14] have led to interpretations of a homoerotic sensibility in the novel.

He objects to ascribing literary significance to legal errors that are not part of the imagined world of Melville's fiction and accused Weisberg and others of calling Billy an "innocent man" and making light of the fact that he "struck a lethal blow to a superior officer in wartime.

[21] Other commentators have suggested that the story may have been based on events on board USS Somers, an American naval vessel; Lt. Guert Gansevoort, a defendant in a later investigation, was a first cousin of Melville.

If so then the character Billy Budd was likely inspired by a young man named Philip Spencer who was hanged on USS Somers on December 1, 1842.

[22][23] Harold Schechter, a professor who has written books on American serial killers, has said that the author's description of Claggart could be considered to be a definition of a sociopath.

[24] Dr. Robert Hare might classify Claggart as a psychopath, since his personality did not demonstrate the traits of a sociopath (rule-breaking) but of grandiosity, cunning manipulation, and a lack of empathy or remorse.

[26] While this argument has been criticized for drawing on information outside the novel, Weisberg also shows that sufficient liberties existed in the laws Melville describes to avoid a capital sentence.