Moby Dick Or The White Whale. London: JM Dent, 1933. Everyman’s Library Edition. Engraved title page. Handsomely bound in quarter dark blue morocco, over marbled boards.

Melville’s great book was not well received when published in 1851; initial reviews ranged from dismissive to hostile, with many critics finding its blend of whaling manual, philosophical soliloquy, and Shakespearean tragedy bewildering and overly ambitious.

After the commercial failure of Moby-Dick, Melville’s reputation suffered a steep decline, and the novel languished in relative obscurity through the rest of the 19th century, selling poorly and falling out of print by the time of his death in 1891. Only in the 1920s, during a broader reappraisal of American literature, did scholars and readers begin to recognise it as a masterpiece.