MOBY-DICK; OR, THE WHALE by Melville, Herman:

New York: Harper & Brothers, Publishers / London: Richard Bentley, 1851.. xxiii,[1],634,[2] plus [6]pp. of ads (5 of them bearing adverts for and reviews of HM's earlier books). Drab purple-brown A cloth, stamped in gilt and blind, orange coated endpapers. Typical light foxing, cloth modestly sunned and lightly soiled, with a few faint spots to the lower half of the upper board, short and shallow patch of fraying at crown of spine (the consequence of a ham-handed book fair browser), a couple of streaks of darkening along the joints, but a very good copy, significantly above average, with only minimal wear and completely unsullied by repairs. First American edition, in the first of the two bindings, with blindstamped plain rule frames on the boards and the central publisher's blindstamped device. Accompanied by a clipped signature by Melville, in full, in brown ink, on slightly irregular slip of heavy paper ( 2 x 6.8 cm). Although preceded by a month by the UK edition in three volumes, this edition was set directly from the manuscript and restores some thirty- five passages omitted from the British text. This edition consisted of 2915 copies, and was published on 14 November, at the price of $1.50. A portion of the edition was bound up in 1852 in a secondary binding, and it was not until 1855, after a warehouse fire destroyed the remaining supply of copies from the first printing, that a minuscule second printing was ordered (250 copies). BAL 13664. WRIGHT II:1701. GROLIER AMERICAN HUNDRED 60.