The Essex and the Whale: Melville's Leviathan Library and the Birth of Moby-Dick
320
The Essex and the Whale: Melville's Leviathan Library and the Birth of Moby-Dick
320Hardcover
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Overview
The notorious 1820 sinking of the whaleship Essex inspired Herman Melville's Moby-Dick, as recounted in Nathaniel Philbrick's bestselling book In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex—now a major motion picture. But how exactly did Melville transmute the historic tragedy of the Essex into what is arguably the "Great American Novel"? Here, for the first time, R.D. Madison collects together Melville's personal "library" of whaling and whale-lore into a single volume and presents these primary sources in a way that readers can readily see how a horrific whaling tragedy became a literary masterpiece.
But where did Moby-Dick begin? Prompted by sailor-author Richard Henry Dana, Jr., Melville supplemented his own firsthand experience as a whaleman in the South Pacific with "libraries" of books that he "swum through" to create his whaling masterpiece. Scholars and lay readers alike have long wondered how he did it, and over the past 60 years, a very tight theory of inspiration and creation has emerged. It is very likely wrong.
This volume gathers together for the first time all of the main texts that Melville encountered, including the accounts of the unique sinking of the Essex by a sperm whale that provided the climax for Moby-Dick. Melville scholar R. D. Madison examines what critics have said about Melville's response to the sinking and offers the challenging thesis that Melville did not even begin the book at all until spurred on by Dana in the spring of 1850.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781440850073 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Bloomsbury Academic |
| Publication date: | 03/28/2016 |
| Pages: | 320 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x 0.75(d) |
About the Author
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments xi
Introduction: Swimming through Libraries xiii
Further Reading xxix
A Note on the Texts xxxi
Illustrations xxxiii
"Chapter 45: The Affidavit," Moby-Dick or the Whale (1851) Herman Melville 1
Narrative of the Most Extraordinary and Distressing Shipwreck of the Whale-Ship Essex (1821) Owen Chase 9
"Mocha Dick; Or the White Whale of the Pacific: A Leaf from a Manuscript Journal" (1839) Jeremiah N. Reynolds 61
Journal of a Cruise Made to the Pacific Ocean (1815) From "Gallapagos Islands Prizes," David Porter 81
Incidents of a Whaling Voyage (1841) From Francis Allyn Olmsted 89
Narrative of a Whaling Voyage round the Globe (1840) From Frederick Debell Bennett 93
A Narrative of the Sufferings and Adventures of Capt. Charles H. Barnard, in a Voyage round the World (1836) From Charles H. Barnard 109
Journal of Researches into the Natural History and Geology of the. Countries Visited during the Voyage of H.M.S. Beagle (1846) From Charles Darwin 111
Etchings of a Whaling Cruise (1846) From J. Ross Browne 117
"Currents and Whaling," Narrative of the United States Exploring Expedition (1844) From Charles Wilkes 143
An Historical and Critical Dictionary (1710) From Pierre Bayle 147
The Pilot; A Tale of the Sea (1824) and The Sea Lions; or, the Lost Sealers (1849) From James Fenimore Cooper 149
A Mariners Sketches (1830) From Nathaniel Ames 165
Penny Cyclopadia of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge (1843) From "Whales" 169
Life and Remarkable Adventures of Israel R. Potter (1824) From Henry Trumbull 177
"Whale," in John Kitto, Cyclopaedia of Biblical Literature (1845) C. Hamilton Smith 181
Account of the Arctic Regions, with a History and Description of the Northern Whale Fishery (1820) From William Scoresby 185
The Natural History of the Sperm Whale (1839) From Thomas Beale 197
A Voyage to the South Atlantic and round Cape Horn into the Pacific Ocean, for the Purpose of Extending the Spermaceti Whale Fisheries (1798) From James Colnett 221
Ribs and Trucks, from Davy's Locker (1842) From Horatio Hastings Weld 225
A New Voyage round the World (1729) From William Dampier 227
Miriam Coffin, or the Whale-Fishermen (1834) From Joseph C. Hart 231
The History of Nantucket (1835) From Obed Macy 245
The Whale and His Captors; or, The Whaleman's Adventures, and the Whale's Biography (1850) From Henry T. Cheever 249
Clarel: A Poem and Pilgrimage to the Holy Land (1876) Herman Melville 259
Herman Melville's Sea Routes 263
Index 269
What People are Saying About This
“Herman Melville tells us that he ‘swam through libraries’ in writing Moby-Dick. For the first time, Madison, an editor of the definitive Northwestern-Newberry edition of The Writings of Herman Melville, has gathered excerpts from all the whaling texts used by Melville and presents a new provocative theory of the book’s composition. For anyone intrigued by whaling, Moby-Dick, or the tragedy of the whaleship Essex, ‘stove by a whale’ in 1820, this is a must-read.”
"R.D. Madison's anthology presents a fascinating display of the whaling literature from which Melville drew in the making of Moby-Dick. In establishing the contexts of the sources and their various contributions to the novel, Madison develops an extensive and revealing analysis of the process of Melville's art. The Melville scholar will find his discussion of the inception of Moby-Dickto be particularly insightful."
"By expertly compiling and editing Melville's 'fish documents,' Robert Madison provides a valuable and long overdue resource for readers fascinated by the origins of Moby-Dick in the story of the Essex and other sources. Contents of the collection range from writings by obligatory authorities-Owen Chase, Thomas Beale, William Scoresby-to delightfully obscure, out-of-the-way forms of information in documents now long forgotten. After nearly a century of published scholarship on Moby-Dick, with this volume readers now have convenient access to the 'cetological chowder' Melville mined for his masterwork of whales and whaling."
"Herman Melville's accomplishment in Moby-Dick was unexampled but hardly unprepared for. In this rich collection of the earlier work that helped shape Melville's subject and his own approach to it—from the Essex narrative of Owen Chase to the fiction of Cooper and the official report of the U.S. Exploring Expedition by Charles Wilkes—Robert Madison has gathered the key parts of Melville's rich whaling library."