MELVILLE, HERMAN. Moby-Dick; or, the Whale. 12mo, original purple/brown cloth, blind-stamped with heavy rule frame and publisher's circular device at center of each cover, spine slightly faded with minor fraying to head and foot, corners bumped, small abrasion to bottom of rear board; orange endpapers with minor discoloration, rear hinge tender, intermittent, mostly moderate foxing, 6-pages of publisher's advertisements at end; custom 1/4 morocco slipcase and cloth chemise. First American edition, first state binding, containing thirty-five passages and the Epilogue omitted from the English edition (published a month earlier). Melville himself famously described his book thus: "It is the horrible texture of a fabric that should be woven of ships' cables and hawsers. A Polar wind blows through it, and birds of prey hover over it." "[Melville's] great book, Moby Dick, was a complete practical failure, misunderstood by the critics and ignored by the public; and in 1853 the Harpers' fire destroyed the plates of all of his books and most of the copies remaining in stock (only about sixty copies survived the fire) ... Melville's permanent fame must always rest on the great prose epic of Moby Dick, a book that has no equal in American literature for variety and splendor of style and for depth of feeling" (Dictionary of American Biography XII, pp. 522-526). BAL 13664; Sadleir, Excursions 229; Grolier, American 60; Johnson, High Spots 57. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1851