London. John Van Voorst. 1839. pp. 12, (ii) of subscribers, 393, (iv) of adverts dated 1838. Frontis, 2 plates. 8vo in 12s. Original cloth, spine relaid, recased slightly tightly, small section cut from half title. With the bookplate of Sir Edmund Giles Loder. 2nd edition Wikipedia - Melville found the bulk of his data on whales and whaling in five books, the most important of which was by the English ship's surgeon Thomas Beale, Natural History of the Sperm Whale (1839), a book of reputed authority which Melville bought on July 10, 1850. "In scale and complexity," scholar Steven Olsen-Smith writes, "the significance of [this source] to the composition of Moby-Dick surpasses that of any other source book from which Melville is known to have drawn."[ According to scholar Howard P. Vincent, the general influence of this source is to supply the arrangement of whaling data in chapter groupings.[91] Melville followed Beale's grouping closely, yet adapted it to what art demanded, and he changed the original's prosaic phrases into graphic figures of speech.

Order Number: 108881