A Retrospective of His Works on the th Anniversary of Moby-Dick Shown in the Chapin Library of Rare Books Williams College, Williamstown, Massachusetts May - September , Herman Melville: A Retrospective on the th Anniversary of Moby-Dick
T , , is the th anniversary In January Melville took ship aboard the whaler of the publication of Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick. Acushnet bound for the South Seas. Whaling was a It was his sixth book, and during his lifetime not a hard business, hard enough that Melville, with a critical success. Only after the centennial of his birth companion, Toby, deserted when the ship reached in and the publication of Herman Melville: the bay of Nukuheva in the Marquesas Islands. Mariner and Mystic by Raymond M. Weaver () There the two men became prisoner-guests of the were the author and his masterpiece given wider cannibal natives of the Valley of Typee. Toby attention. Since that time, Moby-Dick has appeared escaped after a brief time, but Melville remained for in dozens of editions, abridgments, and adaptations, four months, until being rescued by an Australian and writings about it are legion. whaling vessel. Apart from its high standing in the ranks of Melville was later to draw upon his personal American literature, Moby-Dick is also of local inter- experiences abroad and at sea in several of his books, est. Melville wrote the greater part of it at Arrowhead, including Moby-Dick. But the immediate results of his a farmhouse in Pittsfield, Massachusetts to which he adventures in the Marquesas were a Narrative, better and his family moved in and which remained known by its American title, Typee, published in , his home until . and a continuation, Omoo, in . Typee especially This exhibition commemorates the sesquicenten- made Melville notorious: here was a young writer who nial of Moby-Dick, but also Melville’s other literary had visited Polynesia, made unflattering observations achievements. The Chapin Library is fortunate to about missionaries, and bathed with unclothed native hold most of his writings in first editions, as well as women! The American edition of Typee was slightly several of the best illustrated editions of Moby-Dick bowdlerized by its publisher, who then asked the and early writings about Melville. We are pleased to author to further suppress its more scandalous mount this exhibition as part of a two-year celebration elements. Melville did so for the “revised edition,” of Melville and Moby-Dick initiated by the Friends to which he added a brief sequel, The Story of Toby. of Herman Melville’s Arrowhead and the Berkshire County Historical Society. Herman Melville, – 4 Typee: A Peep at Polynesian Life during a Four Months’ Residence in a Valley of the Marquesas Herman Melville, – New York: Wiley and Putnam, Revised edition, third printing Narrative of a Four Months’ Residence among Gift of Alfred C. Chapin, Class of the Natives of a Valley of the Marquesas Islands, or, A Peep at Polynesian Life Omoo: A Narrative of Adventures in the South Seas: London: John Murray, Being a Sequel to the “Residence in the Marquesas First edition, second state, in cloth Islands” Gift of Eleanor M. Metcalf London: John Murray, First edition, in cloth Typee: A Peep at Polynesian Life during a Gift of Eleanor M. Metcalf Four Months’ Residence in a Valley of the Marquesas New York: Wiley and Putnam, Eleanor Melville Metcalf, the donor to the Chapin First American edition, in cloth Library of several of the books in this exhibition, Gift of Alfred C. Chapin, Class of was Herman Melville’s granddaughter, and herself
the author of Herman Melville: Cycle and Epicycle he found, was not that of a passenger in a comfort- () and editor of Melville’s Journal of a Visit able liner. Nor was his first visit to a foreign shore the to London and the Continent, – (). romantic experience he had imagined. His memories were still vivid when he came to write about them in the summer of , semi-fiction- Herman Melville, – alized as Redburn. Although others have praised it, Mardi: and a Voyage Thither Melville in his journal of called Redburn “a thing New York: Harper & Brothers, which I, the author, know to be trash, and wrote . . . First American edition, vols. to buy some tobacco with.” His motives for writing Gift of Alfred C. Chapin, Class of were financial, but not so trivial: his wife was preg- nant, and after the failure of Mardi his royalties had Mardi: and a Voyage Thither dwindled and his account with his publisher was Boston: The St. Botolph Society, overdrawn. Redburn was one of two books Melville From the Estate of Samuel E. Allen, Class of wrote in the space of only four months, together “Not long ago,” Melville wrote in his preface to with White-Jacket. Mardi, “having published two narratives of voyages in the Pacific [Typee and Omoo], which, in many Herman Melville, – quarters, were received with incredulity, the thought occurred to me, of indeed writing a romance of White-Jacket, or, The World in a Man-of-War Polynesian adventure, and publishing it as such; London: Richard Bentley, to see whether, the fiction might not, possibly be First edition, vols. received for a verity: in some degree the reverse of Gift of Eleanor M. Metcalf my previous experience.” Mardi, however, far from Melville wrote White-Jacket, like Redburn, in the “verity,” is burlesque, nonsense, satire, allegory, summer of , with income badly needed, and it as the hero of the work, Taji, and his Norse compan- too was drawn on his own experiences, in this case ion Jarl sojourn in Mardi, a realm of transcendental of service aboard the American frigate United States beauty, and then search around the world for the from August to October . Its narrator, maiden Yillah. “From beginning to end,” wrote a young seaman, is nicknamed “White-Jacket” after Meade Minnigerode, “Mardi is gloriously insane. he buys a white peacoat in Peru. The book is a vivid One persists in the belief that Melville enjoyed every account of life aboard a ship of war, of dark moments line of it, even in his most abstruse passages.” Ray- of terrible weather and punishments for minor mis- mond M. Weaver called it “undigested exuberance.” deeds, as well as good humor and high spirits. It was a failure with most critics, and sold poorly. Obed Macy, – Herman Melville, – The History of Nantucket . . . Together with the Redburn: His First Voyage: Being the Rise and Progress of the Whale Fishery . . . Sailor-Boy Confessions and Reminiscences of Boston: Hilliard, Gray, the Son-of-a-Gentleman, in the Merchant Service First edition London: Richard Bentley, Gift of Shane Riorden in memory of his mother, First edition, vols. Mildred Blake Gift of Eleanor M. Metcalf Melville quotes from Macy’s book repeatedly in Moby- Melville’s autobiographical novel Redburn is based on Dick. This is both the primary history of Nantucket a voyage he took in from New York to Liverpool and an important source for the history of whaling. and back in the merchantman Highlander. He was Its author had first-hand experience and drew upon strong and brave, but young and naive, and did not local records, many of which were later destroyed know what to expect: life for a sailor in the forecastle, by fire and therefore are preserved only here.
Herman Melville, – Rockwell Kent, – Moby-Dick, or, The Whale Typed letter signed, to Lucy Eugenia Osborne, New York: Harper & Brothers, Custodian of the Chapin Library, Williams College First American edition, first binding Ausable Forks, New York, July Gift of Alfred C. Chapin, Class of Gift of J. Brooks Hoffman, M.D., Class of Moby-Dick was first published in three volumes in In this brief letter Kent explains that the design on London by Richard Bentley, with the primary title the upper cover of the Lakeside Press Moby-Dick The Whale but lacking the brief epilogue which represents “an emptied goblet – the cup of life, tells how Ishmael is saved. About a month later, this if you like” above the ocean, but its relationship American edition appeared, in one volume. Praised with Melville’s work is to be felt, not explained. in England but panned in the United States, it receded into the background of American literature until a revival of interest in Melville occurred some two Herman Melville, – decades into the th century. Moby-Dick, or, The Whale Since that time there has been a prodigious amount of writing about Moby-Dick, most of it Paintings by LeRoy Neiman looking beyond its surface story of Captain Ahab’s Preface by Jacques-Yves Cousteau obsession with hunting a great white whale, and Mt. Vernon, N.Y.: The Artist’s Limited Edition, the experiences of Ishmael, Queequeg, Starbuck, One of copies, printed at the Press of A. Colish Stubbs, and the other men of the whaler Pequod out Gift of J. Jeffrey Shedd, Class of of Nantucket, to the ultimate “meaning” of the work. LeRoy Neiman, best known for his paintings of However, there remains no single, definitive answer sporting events, here applies his flamboyant style to this question, no one overarching interpretation to the hunt for the great white whale. – nor can there be, given a work with such a broad canvas, so cosmic a scope, so bottomless a well of thoughts, symbolism, and power. Herman Melville, – Moby-Dick, or, The Whale Herman Melville, – Wood-engravings by Barry Moser Berkeley: University of California Press, Moby-Dick, or, The Whale Library purchase Illustrated by Rockwell Kent Chicago: The Lakeside Press, This edition of Moby-Dick was originally published One of copies in in a larger, deluxe format by the Arion Press Purchased on the Luther S. Mansfield Fund of San Francisco. In keeping with printer-designer Andrew Hoyem’s belief that illustration of characters Of the many illustrated editions of Moby-Dick this or events in the book would inhibit a reader’s imagin- is the most famous, and to many eyes the definitive ation, Barry Moser depicted only vessels, ports, seas, treatment. In Rockwell Kent was in his prime whales, objects, tools, and the processes of whaling. and at the peak of his powers. Well-travelled, a The text is definitive, edited by Harrison Hayford, skilled draftsman with a distinctive style, capable Hershel Parker, and G. Thomas Tanselle. of expressing great depths of feeling, he was the perfect illustrator for Melville’s masterpiece. One of his pictures is on the cover of this handlist. The Lakeside Press edition, issued in an aluminum slipcase (not shown), was the most elaborate physical presentation of Moby-Dick up to its time, and one of the finest examples of bookmaking in America.
Herman Melville, – Herman Melville, – Cetology: A Systematized Exhibition of the Whale The Apple-Tree Table and Other Sketches in His Broad Genera: Natural History Excerpts Introductory note by Henry Chapin from Moby-Dick Princeton: Princeton University Press, Edited and illustrated by Ronald Keller Purchased on the Luther S. Mansfield Fund New York: Red Angel Press, No. of copies, signed by the artist This volume reprints various prose sketches by Purchased on the Luther S. Mansfield Fund Melville which previously appeared in magazines between and . It is opened to “Hawthorne “Already we are boldly launched upon the deep; and His Mosses,” an appreciation of Nathaniel Haw- but soon we shall be lost in its unshored, harborless thorne and his Mosses from an Old Manse, published immensities. Ere that come to pass; ere the Pequod’s soon after Melville and Hawthorne met in August weedy hull rolls side by side with the barnacled hulls . Hawthorne had moved with his family to Lenox, of the leviathan; at the outset it is but well to attend Massachusetts in May and remained there until to a matter almost indispensable to a thorough appre- removing to Concord in November . During that ciative understanding of the more special leviathanic period he completed The House of the Seven Gables, revelations and allusions of all sorts which are to while Melville – from autumn , only a few miles follow. away at Arrowhead in Pittsfield – enjoyed his friend- “It is some systematized exhibition of the whale ship, and was energized by the contact, as he brought in his broad genera, that I would now fain put before his masterpiece, Moby-Dick, to a close. you . . .” – Moby-Dick, ch. . “Ravished in solitude by his alienation from his fellows,” wrote Raymond M. Weaver, “Melville discovered that the author of The Scarlet Letter was A.S.W. Rosenbach, – his neighbour. He came to know Hawthorne: and his eager soul rushed to embrace Hawthorne’s as that An Introduction to Herman Melville’s of a brother in despair. . . .” When Moby-Dick was Moby-Dick: or The Whale published in , it bore the dedication: “In token New York: Mitchell Kennerley, of my admiration for his genius, this book is inscribed First edition, no. of copies, to Nathaniel Hawthorne.” printed by John Henry Nash Purchased on the Luther S. Mansfield Fund This appreciation of Moby-Dick was written by the Herman Melville, – great Philadelphia bookseller A.S.W. Rosenbach. Pierre, or, The Ambiguities “Melville created in Moby-Dick something that will New York: Harper & Brothers, survive as long as the sea itself, an incarnation that First edition will grow more vivid, more permanent with the roll Two copies, gifts of Alfred C. Chapin, Class of , of the years. . . . In Moby-Dick Melville reached a and Eleanor M. Metcalf point from which it was impossible to advance. He had thought much of the mysteries of life, he had plumbed In autumn Melville was in a sea of troubles. the depths of the soul as few other men, Shakespeare Apart from family and financial problems, hostile and Goethe excepted; he saw with a vision that has reviews of Moby-Dick had begun to appear in been vouchsafed to almost no other.” America (in contrast to praise from reviewers in England) and village gossip said that his book was “more than Blasphemous.” In the midst of all this he wrote Pierre, a psychological novel he intended to be greater than Moby-Dick, but which in the event was a disastrous failure and brought forth upon its author a still more vicious hurricane of critical abuse.
As Hershel Parker said in his introduction to the Israel Potter is based on the Life and Remarkable “Kraken Edition” (see following entry), “Melville Adventures of Israel R. Potter (), which purports was deluding himself that the reviewers and the to be the true story of a soldier in the American public would welcome a novel about the growth of Revolution, captured by the British at the Battle the mind of his rich young American hero, however of Bunker Hill. In Melville’s book Potter escapes, romantic he made the blond conventional heroine, goes to London as a laborer, joins rebel agents in Lucy, and however gothic he made her dark rival, secret activities, meets contemporary figures such Isabel. Realistically speaking, there was no possibility as Benjamin Franklin and John Paul Jones, takes that a book of Melville’s could succeed if it involved part in naval affairs, and has other experiences. perversely ambiguous sexual roles (with a clear Finally he returns to America, is refused a pension, possibility of actual incest) and examined, even and dies in poverty. as a philosophical theory, the impracticability of Christianity.” Herman Melville, – Journal Up the Straits, October , –May , Herman Melville, – Edited with an introduction by Raymond Weaver Pierre, or, The Ambiguities New York: The Colophon, The Kraken Edition Designed by Bruce Rogers Edited by Hershel Parker Purchased on the Horace A. Moses Fund, Pictures by Maurice Sendak in memory of Fred Schlosser New York: HarperCollins, Five years after the publication of Moby-Dick, Melville Lent by Wayne G. Hammond once again took ship, sailing to England and traveling Pierre also confused its readers by incongruities then through Europe to Constantinople and the Holy between some of its final and its earlier parts. In Land. He was at a low point in his life: he was hungry book Pierre is suddenly revealed to be an author, at heart for understanding companionship; his writings and we are treated to a satire of publishers and crit- were earning him only a pittance; and he had failed to ics. Melville had planned none of this in advance, but gain, by any means, a consular appointment to some wrote additional passages and chapters to vent his remote place, once again to retreat from the world, anger at vicious reviews of Moby-Dick that had just like Ishmael in Moby-Dick. As a boy he had dreamed appeared, and to negative reactions to Pierre he had of journeying to the Holy Land; now he did so in just received from his publisher, Harper & Brothers, desperation, subsidized by his father-in-law. He and from a friend, the literary critic Evert Duyckinck. returned after seven months with his health much In Hershel Parker published the “Kraken improved, and with the journal here transcribed. Edition” of Pierre, “a reconstruction of the text which Harper & Brothers grudgingly contracted to publish Herman Melville, – a hundred and forty-three years ago, in early January , before Melville added many wholly unplanned The Piazza Tales pages on his hero as a juvenile author and then as a New York: Dix & Edwards, young man immaturely attempting to write a mature First edition book.” Gift of Alfred C. Chapin, Class of The Piazza Tales includes “The Piazza,” an account of Herman Melville, – Melville’s Pittsfield farmhouse, Arrowhead; and five short tales which had previously appeared in Putnam’s Israel Potter: His Fifty Years of Exile Monthly Magazine: “Bartleby,” “The Lightning-Rod New York: G.P. Putnam, Man,” “The Encantadas, or, Enchanted Isles,” “The First edition Bell-Tower,” and “Benito Cereno.” Raymond M. Gift of Alfred C. Chapin, Class of Weaver has said that the final three of these works
“show the last glow of Melville’s literary glamour, Of this treatment of two of the ten parts of Melville’s the final momentary brightening of the embers before Encantadas Leonard Baskin wrote: “The Encantadas, they sank into blackness and ash.” However that may beyond the irradiated quality of Melville’s prose, be, it is true that by the time of The Piazza Tales, at proved to be an apposite vehicle for the work of the midpoint of Melville’s life, his best literary Rico Lebrun. Lebrun was a match for Melville, his achievements were already in the past. wonderful work was driven from that same boiling essence that Melville erupted from, and Lebrun was propelled from the same furnace of unyielding pro- Herman Melville, – bity; they were mighty. Lebrun responded to the first Benito Cereno two sections [of Melville’s work] . . . with a prodigious Pictures by E. McKnight Kauffer set of drawings on cherry-blocks of primordial tortois- London: Nonesuch Press, es which I happily cut, my knife paying faithful fealty No. of copies to his drawn lines. . . . These venerables are variously Bequest of Winfield E. Stumpf, Class of displayed; one becomes Atlas, finding the world ever more hideously difficult to bear, and another shows Benito Cereno his skeletonic cruciform, a mysterious but compel- Foreword and afterword by Lawrance Thompson ling revelation. Here also is the dragging ponderous Illustrations by Garrick Palmer immensity of the beasts and again they are grinding, Barre, Mass.: Imprint Society, hissing in mortal combat.” No. of copies, signed by the artist Library purchase One of the “Piazza Tales,” Benito Cereno is the story Herman Melville, – of an American ship captain, Delano, who encounters The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade a Spanish merchantman with an ailing commander, New York: Dix, Edwards, Benito Cereno, apparently under the care of a First edition Negro servant, Babo. Although Don Benito tells Gift of Alfred C. Chapin, Class of of a storm and plague after sailing from Buenos Aires, it transpires that his cargo of Negro slaves in fact has The Confidence-Man is an unfinished novel, the last mutinied. Captain Delano and his crew rescue Don prose work by Melville printed in his lifetime. (He Benito and take the Spanish ship by force. completed a novelette, Billy Budd, shortly before his Here two illustrators interpret the story in two death, but it was not published until .) The action very different ways: E. McKnight Kauffer with a of The Confidence-Man takes place aboard a Mississippi fine line and soft colors, Garrick Palmer with boldness riverboat, bound from St. Louis for New Orleans. and – very appropriately, given the racial aspects of A satire, it presents a pessimistic view of life in which the story – strong contrasts of black and white. distrust replaces confidence in the course of each epi- sode.
Herman Melville, – Herman Melville, – Encantadas: Two Sketches from Herman Melville’s Enchanted Isles Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War Pictures by Rico Lebrun, cut in wood by New York: Harper & Brothers, Leonard Baskin First edition Northampton, Mass.: Gehenna Press, Gift of Alfred C. Chapin, Class of No. of copies, signed by the artists Purchased on the Luther S. Mansfield Fund Melville dedicated this book of poems “to the memory of the three hundred thousand who in the war for the The Encantadas (“Enchanted Isles”) are the Gala- maintenance of the Union fell devotedly under the flag pagos Islands, six hundred miles west of Ecuador. of their fathers.” “With few exceptions,” he explained
in a prefatory note, “the Pieces in this volume origin- Some of the forty-three poems in this book were ated in an impulse imparted by the fall of Richmond. inspired by Melville’s travels in Greece and Italy in . . . Yielding instinctively, one after another, to feelings . But perhaps the most famous of this selection not inspired from any one source exclusively, is the following: and unmindful, without purposing to be, of consist- ency, I seem, in most of these verses, to have but In placid hours well pleased we dream placed a harp in a window, and noted the contrasted Of many a brave unbodied scheme, airs which wayward winds have played upon the But form to lend, pulsed life create, strings.” In a prose “supplement” at the end of the What unlike things must meet and mate; volume Melville pleads for a charitable Northern A flame to melt – a wind to freeze; attitude toward Reconstruction of the South. Sad patience – joyous energies; Humility – yet pride and scorn; Herman Melville, – Instinct and study; love and hate; Audacity – reverence. These must mate, Clarel: A Poem and Pilgrimage in the Holy Land And fuse with Jacob’s mystic heart, New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, To wrestle with the angel – Art. First edition, vols. Gift of Carroll Atwood Wilson, Class of 4 This long poem, inspired by Melville’s visit to the Holy Land in and including dialogues on the W Moby-Dick problems of religious faith, was in manuscript for some time before publication. Melville remarked resignedly in a prefatory note: “If during the period Ulisse Aldrovandi, –? in which this work has remained unpublished, Monstrorum Historia, cum Paralipomenis though not undivulged, any of its properties have Historiae Omnium Animalium by a natural process exhaled; it yet retains, I trust, Bologna: Typis Nicolai Tebaldini, enough of original life to redeem it at least from Gift of Mr. & Mrs. Robert C. Neff, vapidity. Be that as it may, I here dismiss the book from the books of Robert Carey, Jr., Class of – content beforehand with whatever future awaits it.” The Pseudophyseter shown is a fanciful woodcut of the sperm whale, apparently derived from a cut in Herman Melville, – Konrad Gesner’s Historia Animalium (). Melville Timoleon, etc. wrote in ch. of Moby-Dick: “In the vignettes and New York: Caxton Press, other embellishments of some ancient books you will First edition at times meet with very curious touches at the whale, One of copies where all manner of spouts, jets d’eau, hot springs Gift of Eleanor M. Metcalf and cold, Saratoga and Baden-Baden, come bubbling up from his unexhausted brain.” Following a trip to San Francisco in , Melville moved with his family from Arrowhead back to New York in , and three years later became a customs Konrad Gesner, – inspector. In that low position, in almost complete Fischbuch obscurity, he spent the last years of his life. His death Zurich: Christoffel Froschower, in passed virtually unnoticed. He did not cease Gift of Alfred C. Chapin, Class of to write in those final years, but published little, and two of his books of poetry – John Marr and Other “Many are the men, small and great, old and new, Sailors () and Timoleon – were printed in private landsmen and seamen, who have at large or in little, editions limited to only twenty-five copies each. written of the whale” – Moby-Dick, ch. . Gesner’s
books on fishes also include other creatures that live Moby-Dick contains over six hundred allusions to or in water, such as cetaceans. Here, in a German trans- quotations from the Bible, beginning in his prefatory lation of book of Gesner’s Historia Animalium, “extracts” with five words from Genesis, “And God four pictures of whales, owing more to legend than created great whales.” Most important perhaps is the to science, are combined with a more realistic wood- parallel that Melville draws between his Captain Ahab cut of men stripping a whale of its flesh. and the prophets Jonah and Job: each of the three encounters a whale (or leviathan). Milton too in several respects informed Moby- The New-England Primer, Enlarged and Improved Dick, for example in the character of Ahab as a wicked Boston: Printed by Samuel Hall, [–] genius like Satan in Paradise Lost. In chapter of Gift of Alfred C. Chapin, Class of Moby-Dick Ahab is described as having “a slender rod-like mark” on his face: “Whether that mark This children’s primer is open to a woodcut of was born with him, or whether it was the scar left by a whale, with the accompanying verse: some desperate wound, no one could certainly say.” The Whale’s the Monarch of the Main, Compare Paradise Lost, book : As is the Lion of the Plain. Dark’n’d so, yet shon He keeps the lesser Fish in awe, Above them all th’ Arch Angel [Satan]: but his face And, Tyrant like, his will’s his law. Deep scars of Thunder had intrencht, and care Sat on his faded cheek, but under Browes Of dauntless courage, and considerate Pride William Shakespeare, – Waiting revenge. . . . Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories & Tragedies London: Printed by Isaac Jaggard Samuel Taylor Coleridge, – and Ed. Blount, “The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere” First folio edition in Lyrical Ballads by William Wordsworth Gift of Alfred C. Chapin, Class of and Samuel Taylor Coleridge Melville scholars Luther S. Mansfield (late of Williams London: Printed for J. & A. Arch, College) and Howard P. Vincent remarked in detail First edition, second issue in their edition of Moby-Dick the influence of Gift of Alfred C. Chapin, Class of Shakespeare’s plays on that work, particularly King Lear – the parallel between the madness of Lear and Edgar Allan Poe, – that of Captain Ahab being especially notable. The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, of Nantucket New York: Harper & Brothers, The Holy Bible First edition Gift of Alfred C. Chapin, Class of Translated by Julia E. Smith Hartford, Conn.: American Publishing Co., According to Luther S. Mansfield and Howard P. Library purchase Vincent, besides Coleridge’s “Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” to which Melville directly refers in chapter John Milton, – of Moby-Dick – “Bethink thee of the albatross, whence came those clouds of spiritual wonderment Paradise Lost: A Poem in Ten Books and pale dread, in which that white phantom sails in London: Printed by S. Simmons, all imaginations?” – he “must have had in mind the sold by T. Helder, magnificent final chapter of Poe’s The Narrative of First edition, reissue Arthur Gordon Pym . . . when he worked out the pos- Gift of Alfred C. Chapin, Class of sibilities of white as ‘a colorless, all-color of atheism’
and inscrutable mystery. White inspired the same note W of terror in Poe’s climactic description of the approach to the South Pole. . . .” Mansfield and Vincent also point out, in their Baskin, Lisa Unger, curator. The Gehenna Press: annotated edition of Moby-Dick of , that the pro- The Work of Fifty Years, –. Notes on phetic stranger who accosts Ishmael and Queequeg the books by Leonard Baskin. Dallas: Bridwell in chapter behaves much like Coleridge’s Ancient Library, . Mariner. Frank, Stuart M. Herman Melville’s Picture Gallery: Sources and Types of the “Pictorial” Chapters of Moby-Dick. Fairhaven, Mass.: Edward J. Richard Henry Dana, Jr., – Lefkowicz, . Two Years before the Mast: Leyda, Jay. The Melville Log: A Documentary Life of A Personal Narrative of Life at Sea Herman Melville, –. New York: Harcourt, New York: Harper & Brothers, Brace, . First edition Melville, Herman. Moby-Dick, or, The Whale. Edited Gift of Alfred C. Chapin, Class of and annotated by Luther S. Mansfield and Howard Dana’s Two Years before the Mast, based on the P. Vincent. New York: Hendricks House, . author’s own experiences at sea and on the California Metcalf, Eleanor Melville. Herman Melville: Cycle and coast, was immensely popular, and inevitably subse- Epicycle. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University quent literature of the sea was compared to it. Dana, Press, . for his part, wrote to Melville in late April to Minnigerode, Meade. Some Personal Letters of Herman praise Redburn and White-Jacket, to which Melville Melville and a Bibliography. New York: Brick Row replied: “[I] am more pleased than I can well tell, to Book Shop, . think that any thing I have written about the sea has at all responded to your own impressions of it. Were Princeton University Library. Moby-Dick . . . I inclined to undue vanity, this one fact would be far Catalogue of an Exhibition. Princeton University more to me than acres and square miles of the super- Library Chronicle, Winter . ficial shallow praise of the publishing critics. And I Reese, William S. A Herman Melville Collection. am specially delighted at the thought, that these New Haven, Conn.: Beinecke Rare Book strange, congenial feelings, with which after my first and Manuscript Library, . voyage, I for the first time read ‘Two Years before the Schultz, Elizabeth A. Unpainted to the Last: Mast,’ and while so engaged was, as it were, tied and Moby-Dick and Twentieth-Century American Art. welded to you by a sort of Siamese link of affectionate Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, . sympathy – That these feelings should be reciprocated by you, in your turn, and be called out by any White Tanselle, G. Thomas. A Checklist of Editions of Jackets or Redburns of mine – that is indeed delightful Moby-Dick, –. Evanston, Ill.: to me.” Northwestern University Press; and Chicago: Newberry Library, . 4 Weaver, Raymond M. Herman Melville: Mariner and Mystic. New York: George H. Doran, .
All of these works are in the Chapin Library. Additional writings about Melville, including the latest biographies and critical works, are held in the Williams College Library.