The 1942 Dodd, Mead and Company, Moby-Dick, was lavishlly illustratated by Mead Schaeffer (1898-1980). Mr. Schaeffer was 24 when he was hired to illustrate this novel as well as Typee and Omoo.He later focused on fine art and took commissions from magazines for cover work.
Interestingly, he was a personal friend of Norman Rockwell and he and his family often posed for many of Rockwell's illustrations and paintings. - (Wikipedia)
This copy in the collection is classic, in that some child sometime read the book, leaving his teeth marks on the corners.
Schaeffer chose to illustrate Ahab at the moment he confronts Starbuck with his musket and Starbuck warns: "beware of thyself, old man."
Personally, I love the illustration of Queequeg standing on a whale fast against the Peguod, guarding the catch from the sharks, one of which is clearly larger than Queequeg himself.
When done with the Ahab series, we will examine all of the images for Queequeg, a fascinating proposition...!!
I am really enjoying your blog, and don't comment enough, so forgive me. I do come for most posts though, thank you for sharing your fascinating collection.
ReplyDeleteThis is turning out to be a fun chore!... I thought that I would run out of posts after awhile, however, I keep getting ideas for threads... The current Ahab thread is fascinating to me as I discover the various whys artists have chosen to render the Captain... thanks for visiting Titus.
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