x-library 1922 Oxford, Moby-Dick

#14 in the collection is a wonderful x-library Oxford edition from "The World's Classics", 1922 reprint.

Its a Michigan Library, rebound, beaten up, underlined and well read. This is the kind of thing that no KINDLE could ever duplicate....

On the inside cover someone sometime wrote the following:

Moby Dick an encyclopedia of whaling information bogs down in its morass of data. Incidental tales are interlaced with factual material. However the chase of the white whale by Captain Ahab in the Pequod with its symbolic and ... crew can be pieced together into an exciting tale. The last three days of the chase are the most exciting in the story and might well be read. No youngster who has ever seen a ship will forget the sinking Pequod with a hawk fluttering vainly in the streaming flag on its mainmast as its sails to Davy Jones Locker.

While I transcribed this I needed to review the last pages to understand the reference to the hawk, and immediately I wanted to sit in my reading chair, cup of tea, cigar and read this book...

2021 Spanish and 2015 English Penguin Moby Dick

2002 Wordsworth Editions Moby Dick an UK book

1969 Moby Dick Crowell-Collier

1981 Moby-Dick Bantam Classic

Moby Dick 1980 Signet Classic

1996 Moby-Dick

1994 Penguin Popular Classic

1968 WASHINGTON Square Press Moby Dick

Owner signed inside: Robert R Reeves

1969 Dell Moby Dick

I paid $3 for this gem, Feb 15th, 2012.  

Moby Dick Korean Edition

A gift from Min Kyoung.  Highly abridged, with English on the left side and Korean on the right.  

Captain Ahab has a twinkle in his eye on the cover.  Whoa...  thats not Ahab: it's Herman Melville.

1961 Signet Classic

1930 Everyman's Library Moby Dick with original dust jacket

Samuel Lloyd 1932 owned this gem.

And then for whatever reason some one penned this:

A lovely little gem ...

The state of the collection!

Here is a portion of my collection!   

Kind of exciting, alas I left blogging a few years back because of a number of technical issues.  Instagram was interesting but never really gave much of  back and forth experience.  So..  with these wacky advancements I'll post here for a while.   I love those "how much is ot worth" inquires, rarely do I know but research is the fun of it all!!!   Give me a shout!

Bill

We are in the process of reformatting the new blog posts.  We have made some exciting new additions to the collection since 2015, and are very pleased... but hardware changes have become a bit cumbersome and until we fix the issues with imaging we just have to wait...  not too long, but then again and obsession really never disapates does it.

2010 Turkish Language MOBY-DICK

Ishmael deyin bana

Whenever the editor's sister travels abroad, and believe us when we say she has more air miles than Chuck Yaeger, she keeps an keen eye out for an edition in the language of the countries she travels in, thru or to. 

Success, this last trip, in Constantinople. (Melville knew this place by that name)

Chapter  XLIV THE CHART

But granting all this; yet, regarded discreetly and coolly, seems it not but a mad idea, this; that in the broad boundless ocean, one solitary whale, even if encountered, should be thought capable of individual recognition from his hunter, even as a white-bearded Mufti in the thronged thoroughfares ofConstantinople? 

Here Melville imagines the torment Ahab endures the early sailing of the oceans, willy nilly, waiting for the correct season to find MOBY DICK in his feeding grounds. And asks how crazy is it to look for one whale in the whole ocean, like how crazy is it to search for that one white bearded man in a sea of black bearded men.

1965 Spanish Language Moby-Dick

Llamadme simplemente Ismael.

We have many many foreign language editions in the collection, but alas we have held off on collecting a Spanish Language edition.  Not because we have some problem with spanish dating back to high school when we had to focus on a language and we choose french. Which turned out to be a big mistake, "oh eh le gar" turned out to be a pretty much useless phrase. And thus we had a distaste for all the romance languages, no not at all.  

It was a hesitation as to which country best represented the Spanish Language. One would think that, obviously, Spain was the correct choice, but we thought that our friendly neighbors to the south might also be a better choice. Or perhaps, the Philippines, they speak Spanish there right? 

All of the staff meeting discussions proved moot when this edition became available and we snapped it right up. While its abridged and really poor printing and paper, thoughtless cover design we love that it is Argentinean 

We so fondly remember back in the 1980's when the UK and Argentina came to blows over the Falkland Islands.  There were high tech weapons, sea battles, death and destruction, a vast naval armada steaming south to free a small band of sheep herders from the yoke of.... you get that point. 

But our real point is this: IT was a four month war.  Oh how we wish nations would have four month wars now.   I never thought I would long for those days.  

Therefor we have chosen Argentina to represent the Spanish Language edition of Moby-Dick in the collection as a salute to that proud and beautiful nation. Someday it is our wish to visit Buenos Aires, number one on the list of cities to visit.

1939 Albert and Charles Boni, MOBY-DICK

We purchased this volume late last year. There was some discussion about it, since there is another copy in the collection. Here  However, the other volume has a nice blue cover with silver type and decoration, so we thought that this issue is an example of the continuing drag the depression placed on the economy in the late 1930's. Here the printer forgoes the silver. Yet the three gulls are still lovely.

Chapter LVI

From the ship, the smoke of the torments of the boiling whale is going up like the smoke over a village of smithies; and to windward, a black cloud, rising up with earnest of squalls and rains, seems to quicken the activity of the excited seamen.

Life is full of black clouds, some pass quickly, and other linger. Here a black cloud calls the seamen to action, whether from excitement and anticipation, or from anxiety, we are not told. 

2009 Japanese Language Edition, Moby-Dick

Purchased in 2009, During a visit to NYC.

In 1987, working for a multi-national corporation, the editor was due to make a swing thru the far east on a business trip. The trip was aimed at finding suppliers of the product we were selling here in the US. That trip was to start in Taipai and continue to Hong Kong and end in Toyko.

In his mid 30's, he was in the the midst of prolonged funk, asking existential questions and coming up with little to show.  It made sense to turn back and to reexamine things from the past and he choose to reexamine the books from boarding school that he was supposed to read and never did.

As the cab for the airport pulled up to the house he just grabbed his high school copy of Moby-Dick.

he read it on the flight over...

Thus started this obsession.

1982 Hebrew Language Moby-Dick

For many years we have had our eye on this volume or desired one like it. Finally we were able to purchase this exact edition. Excited, it arrived having been sent to us all the way from Tel Aviv.

Translating Moby-Dick into Hebrew seems a bit conflicted, in a way it is like an Italian baseball team, on the surface kind of reasonable but there is a bit of doubt.

It is a doubt of vocabulary. Hebrew is an ancient, beautiful language but indecipherable to us. The question is: does the Hebrew language have the words to flesh out the whaling flavor or the New England flavor or the flavor of the 1850's jargon? Can any foriegn translation convey the Melvilleness of the original English text? Just as we question a Chinese translation as to how well it stands up, we would question a Hebrew translation. But actually, we do not care. The proper printing of the book is admirable, back to front, right to left, and we place it right next to the prized Japanese volume on the shelf. Perhaps the translation inside is solid and well developed by the translator, but since we can not read a word of Hebrew, in fact it is a complete mystery, we do not care one wit if the translation is whacked, it is awesomely dope to finally have experienced this book and the unique aspects of a Hebrew book insure that this volume too will be a prized addition to the collection. 

Chapter IX The Sermon
Father Mapple quoting Jonah:  ""I am a Hebrew," he cries - and then - "I fear the Lord the God of Heaven who hath made the sea and the dry land!""

We admit that we are judging a book by its cover; we will take it on faith that what lays deep inside is as solid as the externals. Many of the English volumes in the collection are totally beat either in design or condition, but still the internals remain the same: Melville's genius. In the vast ocean of printed material the rarest are the volumes that the internals and externals are harmonious, balanced, grounded, such as the ones that are both beat outside and beat inside by loving use (ex lib or the vastly underlined ones used in American Lit classes), or the ones that are beautiful on the inside and beautiful outside, the work of master craftsmen and craftswomen in the art room and on the press (Lakeside, Arion). The pursuit of a balanced volume is our quest.