Moby Dick or the Whale

This edition of Moby-Dick, released in honor of the book's sesquicentennial, is the authoritative text of one of the world's great adventure stories. A crew of whalers sets out in pursuit of a fierce white whale that cost their captain his leg on a previous expedition. Their names ring through the canon of American literature: Ishmael, the narrator; Queequeg, a South Seas harpooner; Starbuck, the sober and serious chief mate; and above all Captain Ahab, part Faust and part Job, leading his men to the ends of the earth - and the destiny he will share with his foe.

Herman Melville was born in New York City in 1819. When his father died, he was forced to leave school and find work. After passing through some minor clerical jobs, the eighteen-year-old young man shipped out to sea, first on a short cargo trip, then, at twenty-one, on a three-year South Sea whaling venture. From the experiences accumulated on this voyage would come the material for his early books,?Typee?(1846) and?Omoo?(1847), as well as for such masterpieces as?Moby-Dick?(1851),?Pierre?(1852),?The Piazza Tales?(1856), and?Billy Budd, Sailor, and Other Stories?(posthumous, 1924). Though the first two novels—popular romantic adventures—sold well, Melville's more serious writing failed to attract a large audience, perhaps because it attacked the current philosophy of transcendentalism and its espoused "self-reliance." (As he made clear in the savagely comic?The Confidence Man?(1857), Melville thought very little of Emersonian philosophy.) He spent his later years working as a customs inspector on the New York docks, writing only poems comprising?Battle-Pieces?(1866). He died in 1891, leaving?Billy Budd, Sailor, and Other Stories?unpublished.

Rockwell Kent?(1882–1971) was a prolific illustrator, writer, sailor, and explorer. His illustration credits include Voltaire’s Candide?and Herman Melville’s?Moby-Dick.