Moby-Dick, English edition

Call me Ishmael. Some years ago never mind how long precisely having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen, and regulating the circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball. With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the ship. There is nothing surprising in this. If they but knew it, almost all men in their degree, some time or other, cherish very nearly the same feelings towards the ocean with me.

There now is your insular city of the Manhattoes, belted round by wharves as Indian isles by coral reefs commerce surrounds it with her surf. Right and left, the streets take you waterward. Its extreme down-town is the Battery, where that noble mole is washed by waves, and cooled by breezes, which a few hours previous were out of sight of land. Look at the crowds of water-gazers there.

Circumambulate the city of a dreamy Sabbath afternoon. Go from Corlears Hook to Coenties Slip, and from thence, by Whitehall, northward. What do you see? are wedded for ever.

But here is an artist. He desires to paint you the dreamiest, shadiest, quietest, most enchanting bit of romantic landscape in all the valley of the Saco. What is the chief element he employs? There stand his trees, each with a hollow trunk, as if a hermit and a crucifix were within; and here sleeps

IntroductionxiSuggestions for Further ReadingxxixA Note on the TextxxxiMoby-DickEtymologyxxxviiExtractsxxxixLoomings3(6)The Carpet Bag9(4)The Spouter-Inn13(15)The Counterpane28(5)Breakfast33(3)The Street36(3)The Chapel39(4)The Pulpit43(3)The Sermon46(9)A Bosom Friend55(4)Nightgown59(2)Biographical61(3)Wheelbarrow64(5)Nantucket69(3)Chowder72(4)The Ship76(14)The Ramadan90(6)His Mark96(4)The Prophet100(4)All Astir104(3)Going Aboard107(4)Merry Christmas111(5)The Lee Shore116(2)The Advocate118(5)Postscript123(1)Knights and Squires124(4)Knights and Squires128(5)Ahab133(4)Enter Ahab; to him, Stubb137(4)The Pipe141(1)Queen Mab142(3)Cetology145(13)The Specksynder158(3)The Cabin Table161(6)The Mast-Head167(7)The Quarter-Deck Ahab and all174(8)Sunset182(2)Dusk184(2)First Night-Watch186(1)Forecastle---Midnight187(7)Moby Dick194(10)The Whiteness of the Whale204(9)Hark!213(2)The Chart215(6)The Affidavit221(9)Surmises230(3)The Mat-Maker233(3)The First Lowering236(11)The Hyena247(3)Ahab's Boat and Crew---Fedallah250(3)The Spirit-Spout253(4)The Pequod meets the Albatross257(3)The Gam260(5)The Town Ho's Story265(20)Monstrous Pictures of Whales285(5)Less Erroneous Pictures of Whales290(4)Of Whales in Paint, in Teeth, & c.294(3)Brit297(3)Squid300(3)The Line303(4)Stubb kills a Whale307(6)The Dart313(2)The Crotch315(2)Stubb's Supper317(8)The Whale as a Dish325(3)The Shark Massacre328(2)Cutting In330(2)The Blanket332(4)The Funeral336(2)The Sphynx338(3)The Pequod meets the Jeroboam Her Story341(7)The Monkey-rope348(5)Stubb & Flask kill a Right Whale353(6)The Sperm Whale's Head359(5)The Right Whale's Head364(4)The Battering-Ram368(3)The Great Heidelburgh Tun371(2)Cistern and Buckets373(5)The Prairie378(3)The Nut381(3)The Pequod meets the Virgin384(11)The Honor and Glory of Whaling395(4)Jonah Historically Regarded399(3)Pitchpoling402(3)The Fountain405(5)The Tail410(5)The Grand Armada415(13)Schools & Schoolmasters428(4)Fast Fish and Loose Fish432(4)Heads or Tails436(4)The Pequod

Herman Melville was born in August 1, 1819, in New York City, the son of a merchant. Only twelve when his father died bankrupt, young Herman tried work as a bank clerk, as a cabin-boy on a trip to Liverpool, and as an elementary schoolteacher, before shipping in January 1841 on the whaler Acushnet, bound for the Pacific. Deserting ship the following year in the Marquesas, he made his way to Tahiti and Honolulu, returning as ordinary seaman on the frigate United States to Boston, where he was discharged in October 1844. Books based on these adventures won him immediate success. By 1850 he was married, had acquired a farm near Pittsfield, Massachussetts (where he was the impetuous friend and neighbor of Nathaniel Hawthorne), and was hard at work on his masterpiece Moby-Dick.

Literary success soon faded; his complexity increasingly alienated readers. After a visit to the Holy Land in January 1857, he turned from writing prose fiction to poetry. In 1863, during the Civil War, he moved back to New York City, where from 1866-1885 he was a deputy inspector in the Custom House, and where, in 1891, he died. A draft of a final prose work, Billy Budd, Sailor, was left unfinished and uncollated, packed tidily away by his widow, where it remained until its rediscovery and publication in 1924.

Andrew Delbanco was born in 1952. Educated at Harvard, he has lectured extensively throughout the United States and abroad. He writes frequently on American culture for many national journals and papers, and  has co-directed a number of seminars for high school and college teachers at the National Endowment for the Humanities Center and under the sponsorship of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Among his previous works are The Death of Satan, Required Reading, A New England Anthology, and The Puritan Ordeal, which received the 1990 Lionel Trilling Award at Columbia

Winner of the 2012 Fifty Books/Fifty Covers show, organized by Design Observer in association with AIGA and Designers & Books

Winner of the 2014 Type Directors Club Communication Design Award

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