The Editor Hershel Parker, H. Fletcher Brown Professor Emeritus, Uni- versity of Delaware, is author of the two- volume Herman Melville: A Biography and Melville Biography: An Inside Narrative. He was one of the original editors of The Norton Anthology of American Lit er a ture and is coeditor of the Norton Critical Edition of Her- man Melville’s The Confidence-M an. NORTON CRITICAL EDITIONS American realism & Reform ALCOTT, Little Women ALGER, Ragged Dick ANDERSON, Winesburg, Ohio CHESNUTT, The Conjure Stories CHESNUTT, The Marrow of Tradition CHOPIN, The Awakening CRANE, Maggie: A Girl of the Streets CRANE, The Red Badge of Courage DOUGLASS, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass DREISER, Sister Carrie DU BOIS, The Souls of Black Folk EMERSON, Emerson’s Prose and Poetry FULLER, Woman in the Nineteenth Century HAWTHORNE, The Blithedale Romance HAWTHORNE, The House of the Seven Gables HAWTHORNE, Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Tales HAWTHORNE, The Scarlet Letter and Other Writings HOWELLS, The Rise of Silas Lapham JACOBS, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl JAMES, The Ambassadors JAMES, The American JAMES, The Portrait of a Lady JAMES, Tales of Henry James JAMES, The Turn of the Screw JAMES, The Wings of the Dove LINCOLN, Lincoln’s Selected Writings MELVILLE, The Confidence- Man MELVILLE, Melville’s Short Novels MELVILLE, Moby- Dick MELVILLE, Pierre MONTGOMERY, Anne of Green Gables MOODIE, Roughing It in the Bush NORRIS, McTeague NORTHUP, Twelve Years a Slave POE, The Selected Writings of Edgar Allan Poe RIIS, How the Other Half Lives SINCLAIR, The Jungle STOWE, Uncle Tom’s Cabin THOREAU, Walden, Civil Disobedience, and Other Writings TWAIN, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn TWAIN, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer TWAIN, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court TWAIN, Pudd’nhead Wilson and Those Extraordinary Twins WASHINGTON, Up From Slavery WHARTON, The Age of Innocence WHARTON, Ethan Frome WHARTON, The House of Mirth WHITMAN, Leaves of Grass and Other Writings For a complete list of Norton Critical Editions, visit wwnorton. c om/ n ortoncriticals A NORTON CRITICAL EDITION Herman Melville MOBY-DICK AN AUTHORITATIVE TEXT CONTEXTS CRITICISM THIRD EDITION Edited by HERSHEL PARKER UNIVERSITY OF DELAWARE, EMERITUS n W • W • NORTON & COMPANY • New York • London W. W. Norton & Com pany has been in de pen dent since its founding in 1923, when William Warder Norton and Mary D. Herter Norton first pub- lished lectures delivered at the P eople’s Institute, the adult education divi- sion of New York City’s Cooper Union. The firm soon expanded its program beyond the Institute, publishing books by celebrated academics from Amer i ca and abroad. By midcentury, the two major pillars of Norton’s pub- lishing program— trade books and college texts— were firmly established. In the 1950s, the Norton family transferred control of the com pany to its employees, and today— with a staff of four hundred and a comparable number of trade, college, and professional titles published each year— W. W. Norton & Com pany stands as the largest and oldest publishing house owned wholly by its employees. Copyright © 2018, 2002, 1967 by W. W. Norton & Com pany, Inc. The essay “Moby- Dick” by Jonathan Lethem copyright © 2017 by W. W. Norton & Com pany, Inc. All rights reserved Printed in the United States of Amer i ca Manufacturing by LSC Crawfordsville Book design by Antonina Krass Production manager: Stephen Sajdak Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data Names: Melville, Herman, 1819–1891, author. | Parker, Hershel, editor. Title: Moby- Dick : an authoritative text, contexts, criticism / Herman Melville ; edited by Hershel Parker. Description: Third edition. | New York : W. W. Norton & Com pany, [2018] | Series: A Norton critical edition | Includes bibliographical references. Identifiers: LCCN 2017028806 | ISBN 9780393285000 (pbk.) Subjects: LCSH: Melville, Herman, 1819–1891. Moby Dick. | Ahab, Captain (Fictitious character)— Fiction. | Whaling ships— Fiction. | Mentally ill— Fiction. | Whaling— Fiction. | Whales— Fiction. | Psychological fiction. | Adventure stories. | Sea stories. Classification: LCC PS2384 .M6 2018 | DDC 813/.3— dc23 LC rec ord available at https:// lccn . loc . gov / 2017028806 W. W. Norton & Com pany, Inc., 500 Fifth Ave nue, New York, N.Y. 10110 www. w wnorton. c om W. W. Norton & Com pany Ltd., 15 Carlisle Street, London W1D 3BS 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 Contents List of Illustrations ix Preface xi Acknowl edgments xvii Map: Principal Ports of Southeastern New England (Mid-1800s) xviii Map: Melville’s Voyages and the Route of the Pequod, 1841–44 xix The Text of Moby- Dick; or, The Whale 1 Contents of moby- dick 3 Etymology 6 Extracts 7 moby- dick 16 Emendations 411 Contexts 419 Hershel Parker • Glimpses of Melville as Performer 421 Whaling and Whalecraft 429 Glossary of Nautical Terms 429 John B. Putnam • Whaling and Whalecraft: A Pictorial Account 438 Con temporary Engravings 446 Before moby- dick: International Controversy over Melville 455 Gansevoort Melville • [A Compliment to Tennesseans— and a Tribute to Andrew Jackson] 460 Anonymous • [An American Sailor on the Missionaries] 461 Anonymous • [A Bewitching Work] 462 Captain E. Knight • [Gansevoort Melville on the Strategic Importance of Oregon] 464 [Nathaniel Hawthorne] • [Melville’s “Freedom of View” (Not “Laxity of Princi ple”)] 464 Anonymous • [A Unique Eyewitness] 465 Margaret Fuller • [A Challenge to the Sewing Societ ies] 466 Anonymous • [Happy Dog: Herman in the Typee Valley] 467 Henry T. Cheever • [A Prurient Book, That Preys on the Imagination] 468 Anonymous • [Melville’s Moral Obtuseness] 469 William O. Bourne • Typee: The Traducer of Missions 470 Anonymous • [Melville and Missionary Fund- Raising— A Review of Omoo] 474 [Thurlow Weed?] • Who Reads an American Book? 475 Anonymous • [Melville’s Spite against Religion and Its Missionaries] 475 v vi Contents “B.” • [Polynesian Cannibalism vs. American Slavery] 476 Horace Greeley • Up the Lakes, 8 June 1847 [The Tone Is Bad] 477 [George Washington Peck] • [Melville as Sexual Braggart] 479 William O. Bourne • [Traducer of Loftier and Better Men] 482 William O. Bourne • [Melville’s Encouraging of “Rum and Romanism”] 483 Anonymous • [The Total Failure of Protestant Missionaries] 483 E. B. H[all] • Catholic and Protestant Missions 488 [William Gilmore Simms?] • [Review of Mardi] 490 Anonymous • [Civilized Bodies, Barbarous Souls] 491 Anonymous • [The Improving Condition of “Live Cargo”] 491 Anonymous • [A Magisterial Caution from “Maga”] 491 Anonymous • [The “ Middle Passage” for the Irish] 494 Anonymous • [Melville: Prejudiced, Incompetent, and Truthless] 495 Anonymous • [Unfortunate Mr. Melville] 497 [Evert A. Duyckinck] • [A Defense against the “Anti- Popery Mania”] 498 [Evert A. Duyckinck] • [White- Jacket and a Warning to Melville] 499 Anonymous • [A Jibe at “The Essential Dignity of Man”] 499 Sources of and Influences on moby- dick 501 Hershel Parker • Melville’s Reading and Moby- Dick: An Overview and a Bibliography 501 J. N. Reynolds • Mocha Dick: Or the White Whale of the Pacific 510 Herman Melville • [The Captain and Crew of the Acushnet on Melville’s Voyage] 526 Owen Chase • [The Essex Wrecked by a Whale] 527 Herman Melville • [Manuscript Notes on Owen Chase] 532 Herman Melville • [Review of J. Ross Browne and Captain Ringbolt] 536 The Original of Queequeg: Tupai Cupa’s Self- Portrait 542 Hershel Parker • Moby- Dick and Melville’s Notes in His Shakespeare 543 Herman Melville • Hawthorne and His Mosses 544 Melville’s Letters at the Time of moby- dick 559 To Richard H. Dana Jr., May 1, 1850 560 To Richard Bentley, June 27, 1850 561 To Evert A. Duyckinck, December 13, 1850 562 To Evert A. Duyckinck, February 12, 1851 562 To Nathaniel Hawthorne, [April 16?], 1851 564 To Nathaniel Hawthorne, Early May 1851 566 To Nathaniel Hawthorne, June 29, 1851 569 To Richard Bentley, July 20, 1851 570 To Nathaniel Hawthorne, July 22, 1851 571 To Sarah Huyler Morewood, September 12 [or 19?], 1851 572 To Evert A. Duyckinck, November 7, 1851 572 To Nathaniel Hawthorne, November 17, 1851 573 To Sophia Peabody Hawthorne, January 8, 1852 575 Contents vii Criticism 577 Reviews of The Whale and Moby- Dick 579 Anonymous • [The Whole Powers of the Man] 579 Anonymous • [A Credit to His Country] 580 Anonymous • [An Ill- Compounded Mixture] 581 Anonymous • [A Singular Medley] 583 Anonymous • [ People Who Delight in Mulligatawny] 585 Anonymous • [A Most Extraordinary Work] 585 Anonymous • [Fascination No Criticism Will Thwart] 587 Anonymous • [No Fayaway in It. Alas!] 588 Anonymous • [Not Worth the Money Asked for It] 588 “H.” • [A Primitive Formation of Profanity and Indecency] 589 Anonymous • [Not Lacking Much of Being a Great Work] 590 [Horace Greeley?] • [Melville’s Whaliad, the Epic of Whaling] 593 [Evert A. Duyckinck] • [A Friend Does His Christian Duty] 594 Anonymous • [Too Much for Our Money] 597 Anonymous • [Information: The Only Redeeming Point] 597 A. Oakey Hall • [A Book Which Enhances Melville’s Fame] 598 [George Ripley?] • [A Pregnant Allegory . . . Illustrating the Mystery of Human Life] 599 [Augustus K. Gardner?] • [Fresh and Buoyant as Ever] 600 Anonymous • [A “Many- Sided” Book] 601 Edward Forbes • [Purposeless and Unequal D oings] 603 Anonymous • [Talent Perverted] 605 Anonymous • [A Strange, Wild Book] 605 [William A. Butler] • [A Prose Epic on Whaling] 606 Anonymous • [Pristine Powers and Old Extravagance] 608 Anonymous • [A Most Agreeable and Exciting Work] 612 Anonymous • [Mr. Melville Has Survived His Reputation] 612 [William Gilmore Simms?] • [Grounds for a Writ de Lunatico against Melville] 613 Francis Jacox • [A Strange, Wild, Furibund Thing] 614 Aftermath of moby- dick 617 Hershel Parker • Damned by Dollars: Moby- Dick and the Price of Genius 617 Belated Praise and the Melville Revival: 1879–1927 633 Gath [George Alfred Townsend] • [A F uture President Explicates Moby- Dick] 633 Anonymous • [A Marvellous Odyssey] 634 Archibald MacMechan • The Best Sea Story Ever Written 635 William Livingston Alden • [Let Us Have a Melville Society] 642 Louis Becke • [The Strangest, Wildest, and Saddest Story] 643 “A Wayfarer” • [A Deposition from a New Reader] 643 Christopher Morley and H. M. Tomlinson • [Moby- Dick: “The Im mense Book of the Sea”] 644 Hershel Parker • Melville’s British Admirers: “Passing on the Torch” 646 viii Contents Literary Criticism 663 Walter E. Bezanson • [The Dynamic in Moby- Dick: Ishmael’s Voices] 663 Harrison Hayford • “Loomings”: Yarns and Figures in the Fabric 667 moby- dick in the Twenty- First C entury 679 Greil Marcus • [A Single Phrase Can Bring a Hundred Pages Back] 679 Timothy Marr • Kraken: Moby- Dick in Popu lar Culture 681 Mary K. Bercaw Edwards and Wyn Kelley • Melville and the Spoken Word 686 Robert K. Wallace • Moby- Dick and the Arts in the Early Twenty- First Century 692 Jonathan Lethem • Moby- Dick 701 Roger Payne • Melville’s Disentangling of Whales 702 Selected Bibliography 705 Illustrations Map: Princi ple Ports of Southeastern New England (Mid-1800s) xviii Map: Melville’s Voyages and the Route of the Pequod, 1841–1844 xix Dedication to Nathaniel Hawthorne 2 Elevation and Plan View of a Typical Whaleship 438 Whaling Bark u nder Sail 439 Whaleboat Slung from Davits 440 Details of Rigging 440 Lapstrake (Clinkerbuilt) Construction 441 Plan View of a Typical Whaleboat 442 Elevation of a Typical Whaleboat 442 Whaleboat u nder Sail 443 Irons and Lances 443 Men on Boat Stripping Whale Carcass 444 Tools of the Trade 445 “ There She Blows!” 446 Struck on a Breach 447 Lancing 448 Boat Destroyed by a Whale 449 In the Whale’s Jaw 450 Bailing the “Case” 451 “Cutting In” 452 Trying Out 453 The Original of Queequeg: Tupai Cupa’s Self- Portrait 542 Qiao Xiaoguang, The Story of Moby- Dick 694 Aileen Callahan, Breaching Coil 696 Matt Kish, Extract 14 700 ix