MELVILLE, Herman Moby-Dick; Or, The Whale [LC Page, 1926] St. Botolph

MELVILLE, Herman. Moby-Dick; Or, The Whale.

Boston: Issued for The St. Botolph Society by L. C. Page & Company, Publishers, 1926. Twelfth impression (preceded by the eleventh impression of March 1925). 8" x 5.5". 545pp + 8pp catalog with 4 illustrated plates. Original publisher’s blue cloth, gilt-lettered spine and upper board with ship vignette, decorative shell device to spine. Cloth rubbed at extremities with minor fraying at spine ends, gilt dulled but legible. Water spot on top edge. Hinges sound and contents clean. Very Good, lacking the dust jacket.

This St. Botolph Society edition represents an early twentieth-century revival of Moby-Dick at the moment when Melville’s reputation was being actively rehabilitated by collectors, societies, and private presses. Issued between the wars, it reflects the period’s renewed interest in American literary canon-building and fine publisher’s bindings rather than cheap reprints. While not a first edition, copies in this condition are increasingly uncommon and remain a handsome, historically telling witness to Melville’s twentieth-century rediscovery.