ABOUT THIS BOOK

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. 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, obsessed with the destruction of his foe.

This text of Moby-Dick is an Approved Text of the Center for Scholarly Editions (Modern Language Association of America).

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

HERMAN MELVILLE (1819–1891) was an American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and poet. He is best known for his novel Moby-Dick. His first three books gained much contemporary attention (the first, Typee, becoming a bestseller), and after a fast-blooming literary success in the late 1840s, his popularity declined precipitously in the mid-1850s and never recovered during his lifetime. When he died in 1891, he was almost completely forgotten. It was not until the "Melville Revival" in the early 20th century that his work won recognition, especially Moby-Dick, which was hailed as one of the literary masterpieces of both American and world literature. He was the first writer to have his works collected and published by the Library of America.

REVIEWS

". . . 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

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Etymology
Extracts
Chapter 1. Loomings
Chapter 2. The Carpet Bag
Chapter 3. The Spouter-Inn
Chapter 4. The Counterpane
Chapter 5. Breakfast
Chapter 6. The Street
Chapter 7. The Chapel
Chapter 8. The Pulpit
Chapter 9. The Sermon
Chapter 10. A Bosom Friend
Chapter 11. Nightgown
Chapter 12. Biographical
Chapter 13. Wheelbarrow
Chapter 14. Nantucket
Chapter 15. Chowder
Chapter 16. The Ship
Chapter 17. The Ramadan
Chapter 18. His Mark
Chapter 19. The Prophet
Chapter 20. All Astir
Chapter 21. Going Abroad
Chapter 22. Merry Christmas
Chapter 23. The Lee SHore
Chapter 24. The Advocate
Chapter 25. Postscript
Chapter 26. Knights and Squires
Chapter 27. Knights and Squires
Chapter 28. Ahab
Chapter 29. Enter Ahab; to him, Stubb
Chapter 30. The Pipe
Chapter 31. Queen Mab
Chapter 32. Cetology
Chapter 33. The Specksynder
Chapter 34. The Cabin Table
Chapter 35. The Mast-Head
Chapter 36. The Quarter-Deck. Ahab and all
Chapter 37. Sunset
Chapter 38. Dusk
Chapter 39. First Night-Watch
Chapter 40. Forecastle—Midnight
Chapter 41. Moby Dick
Chapter 42. The Whiteness of the Whale
Chapter 43. Hark!
Chapter 44. The Chart
Chapter 45. The Affidavit
Chapter 46. Surmises
Chapter 47. The Mat-Maker
Chapter 48. The First Lowering
Chapter 49. The Hyena
Chapter 50. Ahab's Boat and Crew—Fedallah
Chapter 51. The Spirit-Spout
Chapter 52. The Pequod meets the Albatross
Chapter 53. The Gam
Chapter 54. The Town Ho's Story
Chapter 55. Monstrous Pictures of Whales
Chapter 56. Less Erroneous Pictures of Whales
Chapter 57. Of Whales in Paint, in teeth, &c.
Chapter 58. Brit
Chapter 59. Squid
Chapter 60. The Line
Chapter 61. Stubb kills a Whale
Chapter 62. The Dart
Chapter 63. The Crotch
Chapter 64. Stubb's Supper
Chapter 65. The Whale as a Dish
Chapter 66. The Shark Massacre
Chapter 67. Cutting In
Chapter 68. The Blanket
Chapter 69. The Funeral
Chapter 70. The Sphynx
Chapter 71. The Pequod meets the Jeroboam. Her Story
Chapter 72. The Monkey-rope
Chapter 73. Stubb & Flask kill a Right Whale
Chapter 74. The Sperm Whale's Head
Chapter 75. The Right Whale's Head
Chapter 76. The Battering Ram
Chapter 77. The Great Heidelburgh Tun
Chapter 78. Cistern and Buckets
Chapter 79. the Prairie
Chapter 80. The Nut
Chapter 81. The Pequod meets the Virgin
Chapter 82. The Honor and Glory of Whaling
Chapter 83. Jonah Historically Regarded
Chapter 84. Pitchpoling
Chapter 85. The Fountain
Chapter 86. The Tail
Chapter 87. The Grand Armada
Chapter 88. Schools & Schoolmasters
Chapter 89. Fast Fish and Loose Fish
Chapter 90. Heads or Tails
Chapter 91. The Pequod meets the Rose Bud
Chapter 92. Ambergris
Chapter 93. The Castaway
Chapter 94. A Squeeze of the Hand
Chapter 95. The Cassock
Chapter 96. The Try-Works
Chapter 97. The Lamp
Chapter 98. Stowing Down & Clearing Up
Chapter 99. The Doubloon
Chapter 100. The Pequod meets the Samuel Enderby of London
Chapter 101. The Decanter
Chapter 102. A Bower in the Arsacides
Chapter 103. Measurement of the Whale's Skeleton
Chapter 104. The Fossil Whale
Chapter 105. Does the Whale Diminish?
Chapter 106. Ahab's Leg
Chapter 107. The Carpenter
Chapter 108. The Deck. Ahab and the Carpenter
Chapter 109. The Cabin. Ahab and Starbuch
Chapter 110. Queequeg in his Coffin
Chapter 111. The Pacific
Chapter 112. The Blacksmith
Chapter 113. The Forge
Chapter 114. The Gilder
Chapter 115. The Pequod meets the Bachelor
Chapter 116. The Dying Whale
Chapter 117. The Whale-Watch
Chapter 118. The Quadrant
Chapter 119. the Candles
Chapter 120. The Deck
Chapter 121. Midnight, on the Forecastle
Chapter 122. Midnight, Aloft
Chapter 123. The Musket
Chapter 124. The Needle
Chapter 125. The Log and Line
Chapter 126. The Life-Buoy
Chapter 127. Ahab and the Carpenter
Chapter 128. The Pequod meets the Rachel
Chapter 129. The Cabin. Ahab and Pip
Chapter 130. The Hat
Chapter 131. The Pequod meets the Delight
Chapter 132. The Symphony
Chapter 133. The Chase. First Day
Chapter 134. The Chase. Second Day
Chapter 135. The Chase. Third Day
Epilogue

Editorial Appendix
Historical Note
Textual Record
Note on the Text
Discussions of Adopted Readings
List of Emendations
Report of Line-End Hyphenation
List fo Substantive Variants
Related Documents
Melville's Notes (1849-51) in a Shakespeare Volume
Melville's Notes in Chase's Narrative of the Essex
Melville's Acshnet Crew Memorandum
The Hubbard Copy of The Whale
The Jones Copy of Moby-Dick and the Harper Whale

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