REDBURN. His First Voyage. Being the Sailor-Boy Confessions and Reminiscences of the Son of a Gentleman in the Merchant Service

London: Constable & Co., 1922. Rare First Edition in the Constable printing of Melville's Works. One of 750 copies only Large 8vo, publishers original blue cloth lettered in gilt and stamped in blind, t.e.g., with the finely coated maroon endleaves. x, 403 pp. A superior copy of this very scarce book, fine and bright and unusually well preserved, without wear or blemish, as pristine, unopened and essentially mint. RARE FIRST EDITION OF REDBURN, HIS FIRST VOYAGE, IN THE CONSTABLE COLLECTION, A HIGHLY REGARDED PRINTING OF MELVILLE'S WORKS.
Between 1875 and 1920 Melville had fallen deep into obscurity. William P. Trent's A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE, 1903, gives Melville but three pages out of 593, and Wendell and Greenough's A HISTORY OF LITERATURE IN AMERICA, 1904, gives him nothing at all. The author's star began to rise in 1921 with the publication of Weaver's biography.
The first volume of the collected works was published the following year and did much to expand American awareness of Melville's art. It stands alone as a truly important edition with the inclusion of all of Melville's work known at the time including 'The Poems' and 'Billy Budd,' both of which were here published separately for the first time. REDBURN, His First Voyage, appears as Volume VI of the Standard Edition set.
Melville's novel, based on his own experiences as a boy from a poverty stricken New York family who ships out to sea on his first voyage bound for Liverpool.
In 1837 Melville left his impoverished New York family on a similar voyage. It was the young boy's first taste of life on the ocean and an experience that would instill a lifelong love of the sea. That love was so profound that it is seen throughout virtually all of his writings.
Prior to setting off to sea Melville had been employed at a hat shop. And if his voyage to Liverpool can be viewed as the beginning of his literary career, American literature owes an extraordinary amount to the experience Melville had on that raw morning down on the merchant docks of New York City.