Two Years Before the Mast by DANA, Richard Henry, Jr - 1869

DANA, Richard Henry, Jr.. Two Years Before the Mast. and Twenty-Four Years After. A Personal Narrative. English Copyright Edition, With Notes By the Author. London: Sampson Low, Son, & Marston, 1869. First edition with "Twenty-Four Years After." Octavo. 410pp, 16pp. ads. Original full blue cloth, pictorially stamped with a boat on front cover, gilt-stamped on spine. Spine sunned and chipped on top and bottom, extremities rubbed, previous owner's bookplate. A good copy. "Dana, a man of great energy, wrote Two Years before the Mast and taught elocution at Harvard while attending classes there. His book, published in 1840, was an immediate success in the United States and in England, and it permanently influenced works about the sea, making their authors both more realistic about and also more cognizant of the common sailor's plight. About thirty books with titles echoing Dana's were published by 1860. The most notable literary beneficiary was Herman Melville, who in Chapter 24 of White-Jacket (1850) calls Two Years before the Mast "unmatchable" and whose Moby-Dick (1851) shows several traces of its influence. " (American National Biography). BAL 4434. HBS 66336. $100