This classic story of high adventure, manic obsession, and metaphysical speculation was Melville's masterpiece. The tale of Captain Ahab's frantic pursuit of the cunning and notorious white whale Moby Dick, is packed with drama, and draws heavily on the author's own experiences on the high seas. This edition includes passages from Melville's correspondence with Nathaniel Hawthorne, in which the two discussed the philosophical depths of the novel's plot and imagery. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

In this Sesquicentennial Norton Critical Edition, the text of Moby-Dick is lavishly footnoted. Dozens of biographical discoveries, mainly from Hershel Parker's work on his two-volume biography of Melville, are included-information as specific as what Melville did with his shore clothes when he went whaling.

A section on “Whaling and Whalecraft” again features prose and graphics by John B. Putnam and a sample of contemporary whaling engravings as well as, new to this edition, “the Original Queequeg.”

Evoking Melville's fascination with the fluidity of categories like saw agery and civilization, the cover image of Tupai Cupa fittingly introduces “Before Moby-Dick: International Controversy over Melville,“ a new section that documents the ferocity of religious, political, and sexual hostility toward Melville for his early books, beginning with Typee in 1846.

Evoking Melville's fascination with the fluidity of categories like saw agery and civilization, the cover image of Tupai Cupa fittingly introduces “Before Moby-Dick: International Controversy over Melville,” a new section that documents the ferocity of religious, political, and sexual hostility toward Melville for his early books, beginning with Typee in 1846.

In “Reviews and Letters by Melville,” a letter is redated and a wealth of new biographical information is added to the footnotes, notably to Melville's “Hawthorne and His Mosses.” “Analogues and Sources” retains classic pieces by J. N. Reynolds and Owen Chase as well as new findings by Geoffrey Sanborn and Steven Olsen-Smith. “Reviews of Moby-Dick” emphasizes the ongoing religious hostility toward Melville and highlights new discoveries, such as the first known Scottish review of The Whale. “Posthumous Praise and the Melville Revival: 1893-1927” collects belated, enthusiastic praise up through that of William Faulkner.

Preface

Acknowledgments

MAP: Melville's Voyages and the Route of the Pequod

MAP: Principal Ports of Southeastern New England (mid-1880s)

The Text of Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

 CONTENTS OF MOBY-DICK

 Moby-Dick

Contexts

 MELVILLE's READING AND MOBY-DICK: AN OVERVIEW AND A BIBLIOGRAPHY

 WHALING AND WHALECRAFT

Glossary of Nautical Terms

John B. Putnam · Whaling and Whalecraft: A Pictorial Account

Contemporary Engravings

The Original Queequeg

 BEFORE MOBY-DICK: INTERNATIONAL CONTROVERSY OVER MELVILLE

Gansevoort Melville · A Scene at the "Hermitage"

Anonymous · [An American Sailor on the Missionaries]

Anonymous · [A Bewitching Work]

[Nathaniel Hawthorne] · [Melville's "Freedom of View" (not "Laxity of Principle" )]

Anonymous · [A Unique Eyewitness]

[Margaret Fuller] · [A Challenge to the Sewing Societies]

Anonymous · [Happy Dog: Herman in the Typee Valley]

H[enry T.] C[heever] · [A Prurient Book, That Preys on the Imagination]

Anonymous · [Melville's Moral Obtuseness]

Anonymous · Typee: The Traducer of Missions

Anonymous · [Melville and Missionary Fund-Raising--A Review of Omoo]

[Thurlow Weed?] · "Who Reads an American Book?"

Anonymous · [Melville's Spite against Religion and Its Missionaries]

[B.] · [Polynesian Cannibalism vs. American Slavery]

Horace Greeley · [Up the Lakes, 8 June 1847: The Tone Is Bad]

G[eorge] W[ashington] P[eck] · [Melville as Sexual Braggart]

W[illiam] O. B[ourne] · [Traducer of Loftier and Better Men]

William O. Bourne · [Melville's Encouraging of "Rum and Romanism" ]

Anonymous · [The Total Failure of Protestant Missionaries]

E. B. H. · Catholic and Protestant Missions

[William Gilmore Simms?] · [Review of Mardi]

Anonymous · [Civilized Bodies, Barbarous Souls]

Anonymous · [The Improving Condition of "Live Cargo" ]

Anonymous · [A Magisterial Caution from "Maga" ]

Anonymous · [The "Middle Passage" for the Irish]

Anonymous · [Melville: Prejudiced, Incompetent, and Truthless]

Anonymous · [Unfortunate Mr. Melville]

[Evert A. Duyckinck] · [A Defense against the "Anti-Popery Mania" ]

[Evert A. Duyckinck] · [White-Jacket and a Warning to Melville]

Anonymous · [A Jibe at "The Essential Dignity of Man" ]

REVIEWS AND LETTERS BY MELVILLE

 Two Reviews in the Literary World

Etchings of a Whaling Cruise

Hawthorne and His Mosses

 Melville Letters at the Time of Moby-Dick

To Richard H. Dana Jr., May 1, 1850

To Richard Bentley, June 27, 1850

To EvertA. Duyckinck, December 13, 1850

To Evert A. Duyckinck, February 12, 1851

To Nathaniel Hawthorne, [April 167], 1851

To Nathaniel Hawthorne, Early May 1851

To Nathaniel Hawthorne, June 29, 1851

To Richard Bentley, July 20, 1851

To Nathaniel Hawthorne, July 22, 1851

To Sarah Huyler Morewood, September 12 [or 19?], 1851

To Evert A. Duyckinck, November 7, 1851

To Nathaniel Hawthorne, November 17, 1851

To Sophia Peabody Hawthorne, January 8, 1852

 ANALOGUES AND SOURCES

Ralph Waldo Emerson · [Journal Entry on a White Whale]

J. N. Reynolds · Mocha Dick: Or the white whale of the Pacific

Owen Chase · [The Essex Wrecked by a Whale]

Herman Melville · [Manuscript Notes on Owen Chase]

David H. Battenfeld · The Source for the Hymn in Moby-Dick

Howard P. Vincent · [Sources of "The Try-Works" ]

Geoffrey Sanborn · The Name of the Devil: Melville's Other "Extracts" for Moby-Diek

Steven Olsen-Smith · [Melville's Poetic Use of Thomas Beale's Natural History of the Sperm Whale]

Criticism

 REVIEWS OF MOBY-DICK

Anonymous · [A Credit to His Country]

Anonymous · [An Ill-Compounded Mixture]

Anonymous · A Singular Medley

Anonymous · [People Who Delight in Mulligatawny]

Anonymous · [A Most Extraordinary Work]

Anonymous · [Fascination No Criticism Will Thwart]

Anonymous · [Not Worth the MoneyAsked for It]

"H." · [A Primitive Formation of Profanity and Indecency]

Anonymous · [Not Lacking Much of Being a Great Work]

[George Ripley] · [Melville's Whaliad, the Epic of Whaling]

[Evert A. Duyckinck] · [A Friend Does His Christian Duty]

Anonymous · [Too Much for Our Money]

Anonymous · [Information: The Only Redeeming Point]

Anonymous · [A "Many-Sided" Book]

[William A. Butler] · [A Prose Epic on Whaling]

Anonymous · [Pristine Powers and Old Extravagance]

Anonymous · [A Most Agreeable and Exciting Work]

Anonymous · [Mr. Melville Has Survived His Reputation]

[William Gilmore Simms?] · [Grounds for a Writ de lunatico against Melville]

 POSTHUMOUS PRAISE AND THE MELVILLE REVIVAL: 1893-1927 Anonymous · [A Marvellous Odyssey]

Archibald MacMechan · The Best Sea Story Ever Written

William Livingston Alden · [Let Us Have a Melville Society]

Louis Becke · [The Strangest, Wildest, and Saddest Story]

"A Wayfarer" [H. W. Massingham?] · [A Deposition from a New Reader]

Christopher Morley and H. M. Tomlinson · [Moby-Dick: "The Immense Book of the Sea" ]

William Faulkner · [I Wish I Had Written That]

 A HANDFUL OF CRITICAL CHALLENGES

Walter E. Bezanson · Moby-Dick: Work of Art

Harrison Hayford · "Loomings" : Yarns and Figures in the Fabric

Paul Brodtkorh Jr. · [Selfhood and Others]

Harrison Hayford · Unnecessary Duplicates: A Key to the Writing of Moby-Dick

Camille Paglia · [Moby-Dick as Sexual Protest]

John Wenke · Ahab and "the Larger, Darker, Deeper Part"

 BIOGRAPHICAL CROSS-LIGHT

Hershel Parker · Damned by Dollars: Moby-Dick and the Price of Genius

Selected Bibliography