Herman Melville's widow tied his unpublished papers in bundles in 1891, and Billy Budd stayed in a breadbox until a biographer opened it in 1919

Herman Melville died in September 1891, aged 72, after decades of obscurity. His wife Elizabeth tied his unpublished manuscripts "with pink tape into orderly bundles." The unfinished Billy Budd was among them, kept in a metal breadbox. The New York Review of Books says his biographer Raymond Weaver opened the box in 1919; other accounts say the box was reached in 1906 by his granddaughter Eleanor Melville Metcalf and that Weaver was shown the manuscript in 1918. The first edition appeared in 1924, edited by Weaver with Metcalf's help. That text misread Melville's handwriting and used a title he had discarded. Metcalf later deposited the manuscript and other papers at Harvard, where the leaves are in the Houghton Library. The deposit date is reported only as the early 1930s^†. The estate's value in 1891 is not documented^†.