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...

1928 Pickwick Publishers Romances of Herman Melville

The Moby Dick Collection was conceived to contain only editions of the novel, not abridged, not children's, and not compliations of Melville's works. That said here is just such a compilation. TMDC is meant to be a conundrum. A collection of contradictions.

It struck us as odd: The Romances of Herman Melville.  At first one might suspect that this volumn is the story of the daliances of Mr. Melville's amorous side but actually this book are his adventure stories, sagas of journeys, sea stories, not the fluff of love: flowers and chocolates, hearts and arrows. Yet as we thought more about that title we asked ourselves: what is love but if not an adventure, what is romance then but the love of life and its journey, long or short, often altruistic and in the company of someone we would be honored to spend time with. So we bought the book.

Seven Melville works from Typee to Redburn, each in its entirety. And of course Moby-Dick. Each a memory of an adventure, a journey worth living thru the reading.

And what a treasure this book is: seriously heavy, thick, soft leather covers, golden edged paper, and luscious illustrations. The book itself is a metaphor for romance: serious, heavy, thick, soft, golden and luscious. How many romances have we had? Seven? Eight? Each one an adventure, each one worth the memories.

Chapter 125

... man, though idiotic, and knowing not what he does, yet full of the sweet things of love and gratitude.

1926 Modern Library Moby-Dick Cloth Cover

Recently aquired, the green cloth cover Modern Library Edition of Moby-Dick is the more deluxe version of the book already blogged in the  two prize post.

Chapter VI The Street

"Still New Bedford is a queer place."

Alas, in 1851 New Bedford seems such a fun town. Cannibals on the street corners and Green Mountain boys looking for adventure at sea.   Already alive and perhaps looking out the window of her father's stately mansion, Hetty Green, maybe even seeing Melville himself.

Hetty Green: we would first be aware of when passing the Hetty Green Motel in far away Bellows Falls VT on the way in 1964 to some ski adventure in the back seat of Dad's Buick Electra.  Only years later after much research did we understand the Victorian life of Hetty Green, to the point of making a pilgrimage to her grave in 2008.

Our mother summered at Salters Point, and her father would take her on Sunday visits to the Charles W. Morgan, at that time the play thing of Col. Ned Green, Hetty's son.

During our salad days when we would want to experience some form of prep school hi jinx, we would steal out of the dorm and drive to New Bedford. Really steal, we would obscond with one of the school cars, usually a black Ford Beach Wagon. We had keys made.

Melville: Whaling: Hetty Green: Ned Green: Charles W. Morgan: Family: New Bedford: YOUTH: SKIIING: HI JINX all intertwined and circling around the same being, those are touchstones that define lives.

1926 Modern Library Moby-Dick - Two Prizes

Here is the 1926 Modern Library Moby-Dick, classic red cloth cover from the house of Bennett Cerf, already covered in a previous post.

On the inside is a large award plate from the Halifax Academy, June 19, 1942 given to Douglas Rogers, for the Grade 10 prize in mathematics.

A search from Halifax Academy failed to produce anything for the school, only the motto E Mari Merces confirms the connection with Halifax Canada.

In thinking about this volume, given 69 years ago to a young Doug Rogers, we pondered how proud he must have been to receive it. We can see him walking up to the person who today would be called "head of school", shaking their hand and almost defiantly walking back to retake his seat among his peers.

We then recalled a similar award, given almost 19 years later to the editor of TMDC, who remembers all too well the elation he felt when he received the Armstrong Award at the Sheppard Knapp School, outside of Worcester Mass. - now defunct.  The Armstrong award was given in memory of a lad who fell from a tree to his untimely death. The precise characteristics of the children who received the award were always a mystery, it was not academic nor sports related. Now it could be said it was a catch all kind of thing, given to some kid otherwise left out of the award stream, perhaps too shy to have close friends, too normal to have successes in sports, too smart to excel in main stream academics. But a likable child non the less, a child everyone would agree was a good kid.

The letter in Olson's Small Boat Seamanship, with yellowing tape, is in the controlled precise and neat hand of Mrs. Halkyard, the wife of the Headmaster, and the woman who began Mr. Pettit's latin journey. There is a decided left learn to the letters, signaling perhaps left handedness, and an erie hand writing quality that is exactly similar to little Billy Pettit's own left handed mother's precise, controlled and neat handwriting.

We will assume that if the Armstrong Award were given today, or the Halifax Academy X Grade Math Prize for that matter,  in the form of an ebook, 40 years from now, that E Book would no longer function. It would have been recycled or jettisoned into the land fill long before. The memories just that, vague memories of a lad proudly receiving yet another electronic device, cutting edge for the moment. Fleeting... gone... dust... nothing left to share.

1929 Macrae Smith Illustrated Moby Dick

Here is a spectacular cover. Nantucket slay ride!

Recent addition to the collection it is inscribed Wayne Ralston, Jr Jan 14th 1929.

Wayne was the sellers relation, and judging by the penciling on the end papers, he was a kid when he had the book, it is so wonderful to have a child's well read book in the collection.

He penciled the word "misery" on the side of the book. SO much to speculate on, with that one word. We are so tempted to think that he found the story ponderous, as so many have, but what if that was some sort of 1929 cry for help just after the stock market crash? or some other nasty not even dared to think about?

1928 Allyn and Bacon Edition, Moby-Dick

Here is a well worn, abridged copy of Moby-Dick.

This is a publication of Allyn and Bacon, headquartered in Boston and still in existence.

Stamped "Property of the Board of Education, City of New York, Jan 8, 1932". The text was editied by Earl Maltby Benson, born Jan. 1884, Beta Theta Pi, 1906 Wesleyan and hailed from West Winfield NY, which was named for Winfield Scott, who was known as "Old Fuss and Feathers", longest serving general in American History. Mr. Benson was from a long line of yankees and taught at the English High School in Boston.

Credits in the volume include: "Colonel E. H. R. Greene for permission to photograph the Charles W. Morgan." Greene is the incorrect spelling in this case. Colonel Green was the son of Hetty Green, the "Witch of Wall Street" once the richest woman in the US. In 1924 he bought the Charles W. Morgan and kept it at his home in Dartmouth Massachusetts on Buzzards Bay. My grandfather summered near by at Salters Point, and my mother recalled to me the excursions they took by "motor car" to visit the whaling ship at Colonel Greene's home. Later the Charles W. Morgan was transfered to Mystic Seaport, where, as most people know, she still is.

On the inside back cover is a stamp of the WPA.

1926 Jonathan Cape Edition, London Moby-Dick

Alas, this lovely Moby-Dick volume is abridged. That is the failure of this volume. See the last paragraph of this post.

However, the title page and illustration is a testament to the art of graphic design. The layout, colorful, clean and crisp equates to elegant.

Rowland Hilder, the illustrator, worked this commision shortly after he studied at Goldsmith's College School of Art.

This illustration of the Pequod conveys a open sea air like few book illustrations in the collection. Had the publisher left this volume untouched, this would have been the greatest edition published to the date of publication. Only the Rockwell Kent editions which come 5 years later would have eclipse it. And I may say that the number of illustrations Kent executes may be one of the factors, the work that Hilder does here is equal to Kent in genius.

For those of you who want to know more.. here is an article that I stumbled on this article, which upon reading, I thought was worthy. The explanation of Melville and his digressions at the start is the POINT- for those of you who have found Moby-Dick a "hard read". Relax about that, get over it, and enjoy the digressions...

1929 Macmillan Company Moby-Dick in 2 vols

I have discussed one of the many wonders of collecting a book and that wonder is the history and mystery of the individual editions, who owned them and did they read the book. Try that with an Apple I Pad!

Recently, I purchased the 2 volume Macmillan Co. 1929 edition. I own oddly Vol 2 not vol 1 so I was pleased to find this duo and when they arrived I was more pleased to see both were inscribed in the same neat hand by the purchaser: Dorothy Louise Harding, Radcliffe '30. Dorothy also was kind enough to take notes in the end of vol 1, which either indicated that she read the the book, or at least took notes in class!

Radcliffe College which became fully absorbed into Harvard University in 1999, once was one of the seven sisters, which now are either the six sisters, or the five sisters depending on how one views Vassar College, which no longer is a single sex institution, thus is arguably not a sister at all.

I choose not to show much detail of the covers, as the story inside is much more compelling.

1925 Grosset & Dunlap Moby-Dick

1925 Grosset & Dunlap Moby-Dick features illustrations taken from the 1926 Warner Bros. movie "The Sea Beast".

This copy has a bookplate showing Jack and the Beanstalk and the name Howard H. Goldsby - a google search yielded no results for Howard.

On the contents page someone, in ink, marked most of the chapters with a check or plus sign with the ledgend: check marks- chapters necessary to the story and plus- sidelights of interest. He completely lined out chapter 22 Cetology. Apparently it fit neither category.

Grosset & Dunlap published many books as Photoplay editions with photos from motion pictures.

Thanks go to Meg at Power Moby Dick for reminding me about this gem.

1922 The St. Botolph Society Edition, Moby-Dick

The St. Botolph Society, Boston, published works thru the first half of the twentieth century.

Researching the St. Botolph Society revealed from their website that under "temporary chairmanship of John Quincy Adams, the name of St. Botolph Club was chosen, after the VIIth century abbot around whose monastery in the fens of East Anglia Botolph's Town, later corrupted to Boston, sprang up. Botolph became patron saint of Boston, England and his spirit latterly migrated to the new city in Puritan New England. He was known for his kindly spirit and good humor."

This volume is marked with a copyright to Elizabeth S. Melville and the date 1892. This copy is the eighth impression, Feb, 1922. Printed in Boston by C. H. Simonds .

The source of the 1892 text for Moby-Dick is something that my friend Dave is working on.. We think, currently, that SBS first published MD in 1919, and the 1892 text came from the United States Book Company.

I bought this book in 2003 on EBAY.

NEXT POST: "My favorite Moby-Dick."