Moby-Dick. or, The Whale. New York: Harper & Brothers, Publishers, 1851.
First American edition (preceded by the British edition by a month), one of 3,000 copies printed.
Octavo. [xxiv], 1-[635], [1, blank], [6, publisher’s ads] pp. Bound without last blank leaf, else complete as per BAL. With the bookplates of Edward Laurence Doheny and Carrie Estelle Doheny on the front end-leaves. Rebound in early to mid-twentieth-century full brown levant morocco, covers and spine ruled in blind, spine lettered in gilt in compartments, five raised bands, blind-ruled turn-ins, marbled endleaves (contemporary with rebinding). Front free endpaper chip repaired at upper corner, some thumbsoiling & foxing in text, mild dampstaining to lower edge of first few leaves, a few reddish-brown spots along the top edge of the text, and a light reddish-brown smeared soil-mark on p. 403. A very good copy.
This first American edition was preceded by the three-volume British edition by about a month. "The Whale" (the title of the British edition) had deleted some thirty-five passages for publication; all of which appeared in the American edition. Most of the unsold copies of the American edition were destroyed in a fire, thus increasing the rarity of this important book.
Moby-Dick was a commercial and critical failure when originally published, largely overshadowed by the success of Melville's friend and neighbor, Nathaniel Hawthorne. It wasn't until the early twentieth-century that scholars and critics "rediscovered" this book, and praised it for the masterwork it is. Its use of symbolism, stylized language, and metaphor make it much more than a book about whalers chasing their prey - it is a piercing study of man at his best and worst.
BAL 13664; Grolier American 60
ID:
3240
$
32,000