First trade edition of Rockwell Kent’s illustrated Moby Dick, a production that helped canonize Melville’s long-neglected classic.
Publisher and Year: New York: Random House, 1930
Edition: First trade edition of Rockwell Kent’s illustrated Moby Dick, featuring three hundred monochrome woodblock illustrations and in the original pictorial dust jacket. Issued after the initial three-volume limited edition of 1,000 copies (Chicago: The Lakeside Press).
Condition and Description: Octavo, publisher’s black cloth decorated and lettered in silver, 823 pp. Silver bright; cloth trivially shelfworn; bump to the top right corner of the front board. Firm hinges and secure binding. No writing or prior owner’s markings. Minor crease to to the upper corner of the front free endpaper to p. ix. Dust jacket toned and rubbed, with some chipping to the edges; partial loss of the “M” in the title on the spine; half-inch split to the lower-front joint; and creases along the folds where it had once been mis-folded around the book. Housed in archival mylar.
“Call me Ishmael.”
By the 1920s, Melville’s critical fortunes were turning. Long undervalued, a growing circle of modernists, including D. H. Lawrence, Lewis Mumford, and Carl Van Doren, saw in him a precursor to their own themes and concerns. Raymond Weaver’s 1921 biography contributed to the growing interest in Melville, spurring new reprints of his works. Rockwell Kent’s illustrations for Moby Dick amplified this revival by giving Melville's world a stark, elemental aesthetic. His illustrations resonated with readers, and the major success of the edition helped bring the novel from the academy to the cultural mainstream.
Inventory ID: 038 - 286 - 487
First trade edition of Rockwell Kent’s illustrated Moby Dick, a production that helped canonize Melville’s long-neglected classic.
Publisher and Year: New York: Random House, 1930
Edition: First trade edition of Rockwell Kent’s illustrated Moby Dick, featuring three hundred monochrome woodblock illustrations and in the original pictorial dust jacket. Issued after the initial three-volume limited edition of 1,000 copies (Chicago: The Lakeside Press).
Condition and Description: Octavo, publisher’s black cloth decorated and lettered in silver, 823 pp. Silver bright; cloth trivially shelfworn; bump to the top right corner of the front board. Firm hinges and secure binding. No writing or prior owner’s markings. Minor crease to to the upper corner of the front free endpaper to p. ix. Dust jacket toned and rubbed, with some chipping to the edges; partial loss of the “M” in the title on the spine; half-inch split to the lower-front joint; and creases along the folds where it had once been mis-folded around the book. Housed in archival mylar.
“Call me Ishmael.”
By the 1920s, Melville’s critical fortunes were turning. Long undervalued, a growing circle of modernists, including D. H. Lawrence, Lewis Mumford, and Carl Van Doren, saw in him a precursor to their own themes and concerns. Raymond Weaver’s 1921 biography contributed to the growing interest in Melville, spurring new reprints of his works. Rockwell Kent’s illustrations for Moby Dick amplified this revival by giving Melville's world a stark, elemental aesthetic. His illustrations resonated with readers, and the major success of the edition helped bring the novel from the academy to the cultural mainstream.
Inventory ID: 038 - 286 - 487
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