Melville, Herman | "The vast swells of the omnipotent sea…”

Melville, Herman

Moby-Dick; or, The Whale. New York: Harper & Brothers, Publishers; London: Richard Bentley, 1851

12mo (187 x 123 mm). Six-page publisher's advertisement at end; foxed (as usual). Publisher's original red cloth (BAL’s A grain, red variant), brown coated endpapers; rebacked preserving original spine, some staining and edgewear. Housed in custom clamshell case.

"Call me Ishmael." — First edition of this epic of American literature.

The desirable red variant binding.

"In that wild, beautiful romance Herman Melville seems to have spoken the very secret of the sea, and to have drawn into his tale all the magic, all the sadness, all the wild joy of many waters. It stands quite alone; quite unlike any book known to me. It strikes a note which no other sea writer has ever struck. And when, in one unforgettable chapter, his crew of old sailors gathers on the fo’c’s’le to talk by the light of the moon of life, and man, and the sorrows of man’s making, he rises to a pitch of mournful beauty such as one might find in Webster, in Middleton, or some other Elizabethan, if not in Shakespeare himself" (John Masefield, "Herman Melville," The Daily News, 20 August 1904).

Moby-Dick vanished in Melville’s own lifetime, and resurfaced in the 1920s, when it was reappraised and subsequently regarded as a stunning work of Modernism before the movement was invented. Subversive, prophetic, and lyrical in equal measure, Ishmael’s voice serves as the embodiment of human endurance, and the desire to discover all that lies beyond the horizon.

This edition contains 35 passages and the "Epilogue" not present in the English first edition. It sold poorly and copies remained with the publisher. In 1853 a major fire destroyed the Harper & Brothers warehouse and with it some 297 copies of this volume; few, perhaps no more than 60 survived.

A rarity.

REFERENCES:

BAL 13664; Grolier American 60; Sadleir, Excursions 229