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Moby Dick or the White Whale (In the Original Slipcase)

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Moby Dick or the White Whale (In the Original Slipcase)

by Melville, Herman

  • Used
  • Hardcover
  • Signed
  • first
Condition
Very Good+ with no dust jacket
Seller
Seller rating:
This seller has earned a 5 of 5 Stars rating from Biblio customers.
Lincoln City, Oregon, United States
Item Price
NZ$1,013.52
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About This Item

Limited Editions Club. Very Good+ with no dust jacket. 1943. Limited 1st edition. Leather. Rubbed at the spine ends. Spines are faded. The slipcase is rubbed at the edges, cipped at the bottom of the front (spine). 2" separation at the upper right edge of that front. ; Small 4to 9" - 11" tall; 616 pages; Signed by Illustrator .

Synopsis

Melville's classic was first published in England as three volumes titled The Whale in October 1851. Slow sales of Melville's previously books convinced Publisher L. Richard Bentley to reduce the printing to only 500 copies, and of that, only 300 sold in the first 4 months. The remaining unbound sheets were bound in a cheaper casing in 1852, and in 1853 there were still enough remaining sheets to again bind into an even cheaper edition. Melville changed the title to Moby Dick a month later, November 1851, when the American Version was published in one volume by Harper & Brothers in NY. Of the 2,951 copies printed, 125 were review copies. About 1,500 sold in 11 days, but then sales slowed to less than 300 the next year. After two years copies of the first edition were still available, and almost 300 were destroyed in the 1853 fire of Harper's warehouse. Most of the first editions have orange end-papers, although there are 2 known volumes with rare white-endpapers. Because of Nineteenth-century printing practices, and the time-lapse between when the first-editions were published and Melville became collectible, oxidized paper, bumped and chipped spines, and brittle wrappers are all common for even the most expensive and collectible of these books, which can sell from $35,000 to $100,000. Also, expect heavy wear and maybe even minor repair. Another collectible edition is the 1930 first edition illustrated by Rockwell Kent, a three-volume set published by the Lakeside Press with acetate dust jackets in an aluminum slipcase. These range in value from $9,000 to $11,000. A total of 3,215 copies of Moby-Dick were sold during Melville's life (he died in 1891). Today, Moby-Dick is considered one of the greatest American novels. -

Read More: Identifying first editions of Moby Dick or the White Whale (In the Original Slipcase)

Reviews

On Mar 9 2016, a reader said:
Why would this be 600 since the original was in 1851?

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Details

Bookseller
Robert's Bookshop US (US)
Bookseller's Inventory #
26109
Title
Moby Dick or the White Whale (In the Original Slipcase)
Author
Melville, Herman
Illustrator
Robinson, Boardman
Format/Binding
Leather
Book Condition
Used - Very Good+ with no dust jacket
Edition
Limited 1st edition
Binding
Hardcover
Publisher
Limited Editions Club
Date Published
1943
Keywords
Fiction, Literature, Children's, Fiction

Terms of Sale

Robert's Bookshop

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About the Seller

Robert's Bookshop

Seller rating:
This seller has earned a 5 of 5 Stars rating from Biblio customers.
Biblio member since 2006
Lincoln City, Oregon

About Robert's Bookshop

Robert's Bookshop is a large used bookshop (in the same location for 31 years) on the beautiful central Oregon Coast. We are open 7 days a week, 1000 to 1730. We have upwards of a quarter of a million books in stock, so what you see online is only a very small portion of our inventory.

Glossary

Some terminology that may be used in this description includes:

Jacket
Sometimes used as another term for dust jacket, a protective and often decorative wrapper, usually made of paper which wraps...
Spine
The outer portion of a book which covers the actual binding. The spine usually faces outward when a book is placed on a shelf....
Good+
A term used to denote a condition a slight grade better than Good.
Edges
The collective of the top, fore and bottom edges of the text block of the book, being that part of the edges of the pages of a...

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