New York: Harper & Brothers/London: Richard Bentley, 1851. First American edition. 8vo. xxiii, (i), 634, (1, Epilogue) pp., without rear ads; lacking 26*2 (pp. 611/612). Later 19th century quarter black calf over marbled paper-covered boards, stamped in gilt, front and rear boards detached, spine worn and dry with loss at top and bottom, boards and extremities rubbed; red speckled edges; old newspaper clippings mounted to front paste-down; old ownership signature (John Fox), dated December 1888, at top of title-page (now partially trimmed), ownership stamp of same faintly present on dedication leaf; scattered foxing; scattered light dampstaining in fore-edge of several leaves. BAL 13664; Grolier American, 60; Tanselle 2

First American edition, printed in 2,915 copies, and preceded only by a month by the three-volume English edition. Contains thirty-five passages not present in the earlier one. In Grolier's One Hundred Influential American Books, Melville's great novel can best be described as containing "the sounds and scents, the very flavor, of the maritime life of our whaling ancestors" and in Johnson's High Spots, as a "masterpiece" after rising from semi-obscurity in the 20th century