Moby-dick, or the Whale (Northwestern-Newberry Editions of the Writings of Herman Melville)

Herman Melville

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0810119110 ISBN 13: 9780810119116

Publisher: Northwestern University Press, 2001

This edition of ""Moby-Dick"", released in honour of the book's 150th anniversary, is the authoritative text of one of the world's great adventure stories. A crew of whalers set out in pursuit of a fierce white whale. Their names ring through the canon of American literature: Ishmael, the narrator; Queenqueg, a South Seas harpooner; Starbuck, the sober and serious chief mate; and above all Captain Ahab, part Faust and part Job, leading them to the ends of the earth - and the destiny he will share with his foe. In ""Moby-Dick"", Melville set out to write ""a mighty book"" on a ""mighty theme"". This text of ""Moby-Dick"" is an Approved Text of the Center for Scholarly Editions (Modern Language Association of America).

Review:

Arguably Herman Melville's greatest work, and hailed as a classic American novel, Moby Dick tells the tale of one man's fatal obsession and his willingness to sacrifice his life and that of his crew to achieve his goal. The story follows the fortunes of Captain Ahab and the culturally and spiritually diverse crew of the Pequod, a 19th century whaling ship. The Pequod is on its last voyage out of New Bedford, Mass, in pursuit of Moby Dick, the great white whale which has been Ahab's obsessional quarry and bitter adversary for many years. Narrated by sole survivor Ishmael, the tale forms a complex fictional fusion, combining a wealth of literary symbolism, hidden meaning and philosophical debate with adventure narrative and a detailed historical account of the 19th century whaling trade. --Emily Lowson

Review:

." . . an important work of scholarship because it provides the best text currently available for the his carefully studied novel. Hayford and Parker have been the first editors to realize that Melville must have read and corrected the American proofsheets from which the English edition was printed and that a considerable number of English readings have hitherto unrecognized authority for inclusion in a critical text." --Nineteenth-Century Fiction