Moby Dick; Or the Whale

Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1981. Hardcover. Fine. Hardcover. One of 750 copies. This handsome edition of Moby Dick is described in a preface to this California Press offering as a refashioning of " distinguished contribution to the heritage of fine printing in the San Francisco Bay area. The original edition created by...the Arion Press, was the most majestic presentation of America's most monumental novel. ...The present printing is the result of consultation between [the Arion Press]....In cooperation, the two presses have devised a page with handsome dimensions, a page that, though smaller than the original, is still generous and suitable to the scope of the text." Through a photographic reproduction of the original pages, It replicates the type, initial letters, and all of the illustrations of famed artist Barry Moser. The text for this edition is the first "to use the careful editorial work of three leading scholars of Melville's writings - Harrison Hayford, Hershel Parker, and G. Thomas Tanselle." Bound is dark blue cloth boards with titling in silver to the spine. Binding and interior pages are in fine condition. Housed in a near fine dark blue slipcase with titling in white to spine. Measures 9 x 13.5 inches. 576 pages plus Epilogue and colophon. PRI/091924. (Inventory #: 37468)