Apr 19, 2007 - Sale 2110

Sale 2110 - Lot 82

Price Realized: $ 13,200
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 20,000 - $ 30,000
MELVILLE, HERMAN. Moby-Dick; or, the Whale. 12mo, publisher's presentation 1/4 calf, professionally rebacked retaining original backstrip, labels preserved but mostly chipped away; custom 1/4 morocco gilt clamshell box. Photographs documenting the rebinding and a note from the binder supporting authenticity of all leaves is available upon request. first edition, second printing. One of 250 copies. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1855
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Additional Details

family copy of moby-dick, signed by thomas melville and dated "1872 New Brighton / Staten Island" on front free endpaper. Thomas was Melville's younger brother and a sea captain who voyaged around the world, eventually commanding several merchant ships in the Pacific. Melville joined his brother Tom aboard the clipper ship Meteor to California nine years after Moby-Dick was published and later dedicated both the poem "To the Master of the Meteor" and his novel Redburn to him. Upon Thomas's retirement in 1867, he became governor of the Sailor's Snug Harbor, a sailor's and sea captain's rest home on Staten Island where he signed and dated this volume.
This second printing of Moby-Dick was taken from the original sheets of the first 1851 edition, which were protected in a fire-proof vault when a fire ravaged the Harper & Brothers office in 1853.