Description

Franklin Library leather edition of Herman Melville's "Moby Dick or the Whale," a Limited edition, one of the 100 GREATEST BOOKS OF ALL TIME series, published in 1974. Bound in black leather, the book has sea blue French moire silk end leaves, acid-free paper, Symth-sewn binding, a satin book marker, hubbed spine, gold gilding on three edges---in near FINE condition. Herman Melville, who lived from 1819-1891, was born in New York City, the son of a cultivated gentleman who went bankrupt. Young Herman's schooling ended when he was 15, and after clerking in a NY bank, farming and teaching, he shipped as a cabin-boy to Liverpool in 1839. Later he sailed on the ACUSHNET for the SOUTH SEA, and this 18-month voyage provided a factual basis for "Moby Dick." Having completed his education in what he later termed "the only HARVARD and YALE" that were open to me, he began writing. "Moby Dick" opens with classic line: "Call me Ishmael. . . Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp drizzly November in my soul. . .I count it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball." "What of it, if some old hunks of a sea-captain orders me to get a broom and sweep down the decks? What does that indignity amount to, weighed, I mean, in the scales of the new Testament?" Ishmael goes to NEW BEDFORD where he signs for a voyage on the whaler PEQUOD, drawing as his roommate QUEEQUEP, a Polynesian prince. The two become comrades. After hearing a symbolic sermon by FATHER MAPPLE, they join their ship, which leaves NANTUCKET on Christmas Day. The captain, AHAB, is a monomaniac whose one purpose is to capture the fierce, cunning white whale, MOBY DICK, which had torn away his leg during their last encounter. Others in the crew included: Fedallah, the American Indian harpooner, Tashtego; the African, Daggoo, the Negro cabin boy, Pip. The voyage carries the Pequod nearly around the world. "The ship, like Satan, would not sink to hell till she had dragged a living part of heaven along with her, and helmeted herself with it. . ." Ishmael---like Yossarian in Joseph Heller's "Catch 22"--- survives! 522 pages. I offer Combined shipping.