Thomas. The Natural History of the Sperm Whale ... To Which is Added, A Sketch of a South-Sea Whaling Voyage.

by BEALE

£1,800 · Offered by Henry Sotheran Ltd

Melville’s Primary Reference for Moby Dick BEALE, Thomas. The Natural History of the Sperm Whale ... To Which is Added, A Sketch of a South-Sea Whaling Voyage. London: John van Voorst. 1839. 8vo. Contemporary half calf with marbled sides, rebacked, gilt morocco lettering-piece relaid to spine; pp. [iii]–vi, [7]–12, 393, bound without half-title; wood-engraved frontispiece and 2 wood-engraved plates, wood-engraved illustrations in the text; a few minor abrasions to corners; internally remarkably clean and fresh; ownership inscription of Brian Birley Roberts to front free endpaper and his posthumous bookplate to front pastedown (see below). Second edition, considerably revised and expanded, of this monumental early work on sperm whales by ship’s surgeon Thomas Beale, the edition owned by Herman Melville and his ‘primary source book … in composing the cetological section of Moby Dick ’ (Vincent, p. 128). Melville acquired a copy of Beale’s Natural History of the Sperm Whale – procuring it from London through Putnam’s in New York – on 10 July 1850, annotating it throughout and adding checkmarks in the margins to note his progress. Indeed, Beale’s work receives explicit mention in Moby Dick , in which it is praised as one of ‘only two books in being which at all pretend to put the living sperm whale before you, and at the same time, in the remotest degree succeed in their attempt’, and Beale’s drawings of the sperm whale are characterised ‘by great odds’ as ‘the best’. The first e

• Binding: Hardcover

Found via Rare Books Intel, a search across rare-book dealers, auction houses and marketplaces worldwide.