1931 Bonibooks Paper Back Moby-Dick

The earliest paper back in the collection, the 1931Albert and Charles Boni printing, is hard to find in any condition and commands a premium. It is lavishly illustrated with woodcuts by Howard Simon.  This copy is inscribed by Marianne Morrill.

Chapter LXXXI

Stubb speaks:

 "We all know what an astonishing atmospheric weight we ourselves stand up under; even here, above-ground, in the air; how vast, then, the burden of a whale, bearing on his back a column of two hundred fathoms of ocean! It must at least equal the weight of fifty atmospheres. "

The weight of the column of water on a whale's back is huge, but for the whale it is nothing. It is a trick, however, since the pressures are offset by natural mechanics. Something we humans all do naturally as well. 

2011 Harper Perennial Classics MOBY-DICK

The 2011 Harper Perennial, worn and read, good for the first owner, name lost, purchased by the Collection from the GOODWILL of Middle Tennessee, landlocked for sure, yet whomever had use of the book, travelled the world thru Melville's pages.

Chapter 99

Stubb soliloquized the signs of the zodiac from Bowditch, the well known and well used almanac we all carried on board our Pequods, small and large:

Virgo, the Virgin! that's our first love; we marry and think to be happy for aye, when pop comes Libra, or the Scales - happiness weighed and found wanting; and while we are very sad about that, Lord! how we suddenly jump, as Scorpio, or the Scorpion, stings us in the rear...