MELVILLE, Herman. Redburn: His First Voyage. Being the Sailor-Boy Confessions and Reminiscences of the Son-of-a-Gentleman, in the Merchant Service . London: Richard Bentley 1849.
MELVILLE, Herman. Redburn: His First Voyage. Being the Sailor-Boy Confessions and Reminiscences of the Son-of-a-Gentleman, in the Merchant Service . London: Richard Bentley 1849. First edition, published in an edition of 750 copies, of Melville’s fictional narrative based loosely on his own first sea voyage in 1839. The rare English edition precedes the first American edition by six weeks. A superb bright and fine copy. 2 volumes, 8vo. Half-title in vol. 2 as issued, decorated endpapers with publisher’s advertisements (BAL state A). Original navy blue cloth, decorated in blind and gilt-lettered on spines, bound by Remnant & Edmonds with their label on the inside rear cover of volume 1; cloth folding case. Provenance : J.G. Heap Congleton (signatures on title of vol. 1 and half-title vol. 2). BAL 13659. The book is a fictional narrative based loosely on Melville's own first voyage to Liverpool in 1839. The manuscript was completed in less than ten weeks and, without any attempt at polishing it, Melville submitted it to his American publisher Harper & Bros for publication. After checking the proof sheets, which came out in August, he sent them along to Bentley for publication in England, where it appeared six weeks before the American edition which was published in November 1849. Melville alluded to Redburn for the first time in a letter to his English publisher Richard Bentley June 5, 1849, in which he wrote that the novel would be practical rather than follow the "unwise" course of his previous novel, Mardi , which had been harshly criticized. He continues: “I have now in preparation a thing of a widely different cast from "Mardi"—a plain, straightforward, amusing narrative of personal experience—the son of a gentleman on his first voyage to sea as a sailor—no metaphysics, no conic-sections, nothing but cakes & ale. I have shifted my ground from the South Seas to a different quarter of the globe—nearer home—and what I write I have almost wholly picked up by my own observations under comical circumstances” ( Letters , ed. By Davis and Gilman, New Haven, 1960). Melville adopted this more commercial approach to writing as his family obligations increased and his working conditions became more difficult. Living with him in the small house in New York City were his wife, child, mother, sisters, and his brother Allen with his wife and child. Melville later portrayed himself at this time as being forced to write "with duns all around him, & looking over the back of his chair—& perching on his pen & diving in his inkstand—like the devils about St. Anthony." Two years later Bentley would first publish his masterpiece The Whale prior to the American edition as Moby-Dick .
MELVILLE, Herman. Redburn: His First Voyage. Being the Sailor-Boy Confessions and Reminiscences of the Son-of-a-Gentleman, in the Merchant Service . London: Richard Bentley 1849.
MELVILLE, Herman. Redburn: His First Voyage. Being the Sailor-Boy Confessions and Reminiscences of the Son-of-a-Gentleman, in the Merchant Service . London: Richard Bentley 1849. First edition, published in an edition of 750 copies, of Melville’s fictional narrative based loosely on his own first sea voyage in 1839. The rare English edition precedes the first American edition by six weeks. A superb bright and fine copy. 2 volumes, 8vo. Half-title in vol. 2 as issued, decorated endpapers with publisher’s advertisements (BAL state A). Original navy blue cloth, decorated in blind and gilt-lettered on spines, bound by Remnant & Edmonds with their label on the inside rear cover of volume 1; cloth folding case. Provenance : J.G. Heap Congleton (signatures on title of vol. 1 and half-title vol. 2). BAL 13659. The book is a fictional narrative based loosely on Melville's own first voyage to Liverpool in 1839. The manuscript was completed in less than ten weeks and, without any attempt at polishing it, Melville submitted it to his American publisher Harper & Bros for publication. After checking the proof sheets, which came out in August, he sent them along to Bentley for publication in England, where it appeared six weeks before the American edition which was published in November 1849. Melville alluded to Redburn for the first time in a letter to his English publisher Richard Bentley June 5, 1849, in which he wrote that the novel would be practical rather than follow the "unwise" course of his previous novel, Mardi , which had been harshly criticized. He continues: “I have now in preparation a thing of a widely different cast from "Mardi"—a plain, straightforward, amusing narrative of personal experience—the son of a gentleman on his first voyage to sea as a sailor—no metaphysics, no conic-sections, nothing but cakes & ale. I have shifted my ground from the South Seas to a different quarter of the globe—nearer home—and what I write I have almost wholly picked up by my own observations under comical circumstances” ( Letters , ed. By Davis and Gilman, New Haven, 1960). Melville adopted this more commercial approach to writing as his family obligations increased and his working conditions became more difficult. Living with him in the small house in New York City were his wife, child, mother, sisters, and his brother Allen with his wife and child. Melville later portrayed himself at this time as being forced to write "with duns all around him, & looking over the back of his chair—& perching on his pen & diving in his inkstand—like the devils about St. Anthony." Two years later Bentley would first publish his masterpiece The Whale prior to the American edition as Moby-Dick .
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