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MELVILLE (HERMANN) Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, FIRST AMERICAN EDITION, New York, Harper & Brothers, 1851
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MELVILLE (HERMANN)
Footnotes
'A BOOK THAT HAS NO EQUAL IN AMERICAN LITERATURE': the first American edition of Moby-Dick in the rarer red cloth binding, albeit restored. This edition followed the original English edition (The Whale, in three volumes) by a month, and contained thirty-five passages and the "Epilogue" previously omitted. "[Melville's] great book, Moby Dick, was a complete practical failure, misunderstood by the critics and ignored by the public; and in 1853 the Harpers' fire destroyed the plates of all of his books and most of the copies remaining in stock [only about sixty copies survived]... Melville's permanent fame must always rest on the great prose epic of Moby Dick, a book that has no equal in American literature for variety and splendor of style and for depth of feeling" (DAB). "Within its pages can be found the sound and scents, the very flavor, of the maritime life of our whaling ancestors" (Grolier, 100 American).
Provenance: "Screvon M. Kinne"[?], faint pencil inscription dated "Decr 2nd 51" at the head of the fly-title.





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