Beschreibung:

Title: Moby-Dick; or, The Whale Author: Melville, Herman Place: New York Publisher: Harper & Brothers Date: 1851 Description: xxiii, [1 blank], 634, [1 "Epilogue"], [1 blank] + [6] ad pp. Without final blank. 7½x4¾, original brown blind-stamped cloth; custom quarter morocco box. First American Edition. First American edition of the most important American novel of the 19th century. This edition follows the English edition ("The Whale") by a month and contains thirty-five passages and the "Epilogue" omitted in London. “[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 the fire]...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). The present copy is in the very rare BAL second binding without the publisher’s circular device and covers in a grolieresque frame. The color here, however, is brown; whereas BAL notes only in blue, gray or “also other colors?” The second binding is considerably rarer than the first, although not so anomolous as the third. BAL 13664; Grolier, 100 American, 60; Sadleir, Excursions in Victorian Bibliography, p. 339. Lot Amendments Condition: Expert restorations to cloth, rebacked using original spine cloth, spine re-gilt in original style, replacement old endpapers; edge dampstain for about 100 pp., including title-page; some minor foxing; overall, very nice; expertly restored and the contents much better than usual; in fine box. Item number: 166999