MELVILLE, HERMAN
Moby-Dick; or, the Whale. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1851. First American edition, first issue binding. Original brown cloth, a scarce copy in BAL's "B" grain with the circular Harper's device stamped upside down (noted in one copy per BAL), the covers stamped in blind with a heavy rule frame, orange-coated endpapers, double flyleaves at front and back, housed in a morocco backed slipcase. 7 3/8 x 5 inches (18.75 x 12.5 cm); [1]-xxiii, [1], 634, [1] [1-blank], 6 pp. ads. The cloth with faint stains and rubbed extremities and corners, the headcap and rear joint with a few chips, moderately spotted throughout, a neat contemporary pencil inscription to one flyleaf dated 1853 from Rockville, Illinois gifts the book to a Master Henry Curtis, the head of the title and the front pastedown with the neat early ownership stamp of H.L. Curtis, small 19th century booklabel of Henry B. Curtis to pastedown, the large bookplate of Richard Bayard Dominick recently tipped back onto the front free endpaper covers a similarly sized adhesive stain, slip laid-in from the dealer Henry Clapp Smith.

"Call me Ishmael" - an unsophisticated first edition copy of Melville's whaling classic. This copy is distinctive for being in a first issue binding with an unreported cloth grain and with the Harper's device stamped upside down on both covers, seen in one copy by BAL and not referenced by other copies in the auction record. As is well known, the American edition followed the English by a month, and contains thirty-five passages that were expunged in the English edition, and the Epilogue recounting Ishmael's rescue "It was the devious-cruising Rachel, that in her retracing search after her missing children, only found another orphan." BAL 13664; Grolier American 60; Johnson High Spots 57.