3 volumes. viii, 312; iv, 303; iv, 328 pp. (8vo) 7¾x4¾, modern blue half morocco, spines lettered in gilt, raised bands, top edges gilt, bound by James MacDonald Co. of New York. Housed in a custom morocco backed box with triple spine lettered in gilt, small bone whale tail device attached to center spine. First Edition.

"The English edition, The Whale, Bentley, London, 3 vols....was published October 18 against the American November 19. This edition was set up from Harper proof-sheets, which were edited to some extent by Bentley, without Melville's knowledge. The editing consisted of toning down profanity and some alleged irreverent references; also, the 'Epilogue' was omitted, which caused at least one English review to comment on the impossibility of a first-person narrative, when everyone on the Pequod was killed by the white whale's attack...Moby Dick is the great conundrum-book. Is it a profound allegory with the white whale the embodiment of moral evil, or merely the finest story of the sea ever written? Whichever it is, now rediscovered, it stirs and stimulates each succeeding generation, whether reading it for pleasure or with a scalpel. Within its pages can be found the sound and scents, the very flavor, of the maritime life of our whaling ancestors" (Grolier, 100 American). BAL 13663. Grolier, 100 American, 60. Sadleir 1685 ("one of the rarest of three-deckers").