Moby-Dick

Herman Melville

728 pages, Paperback

ISBN: 039309670X

ISBN13:

Language: English

Publish: -94665600000

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The text of Moby-Dick in this volume goes further to recover and present Melville’s own final intentions than any other edition has been able to accomplish to date. The editors have identified and corrected scribal and compositorial errors in the first American edition and have emended the American text with many readings for the first English edition of The Whale – changes indicated by Melville himself. Both a complete description of textual problems and a full collation of textual variants between the first American and English editions are included.

Whaling and whalecraft are cogently explained through maps, a glossary of nautical terms, an illustrated essay on whaling vessels and equipment (especially prepared by John B. Putnam), and contemporary engravings.

“Reviews and Letters” by Melville help to show how he wrote and how he thought. The “Analogues and Sources” reveal the raw materials upon which Melville drew in shaping his masterpiece. The critical essays present a remarkable overview of Melville’s critical fortunes. There the reader may study every important critical attitude, from “Contemporary Reviews” and the “Interim Appraisals,” through the period of “Revival and Reaction,” to the present.

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