True first edition of Moby Dick, preceding the American edition by a month and containing substantial textual differences, this the first issue with the 1851 title page. With only 500 copies printed, this edition is much rarer than its American successor and even poor copies are extremely hard to find. Copies as clean as the present example are exceptionally rare.
The English edition was set up from the proof-sheets of the American edition, published by Harper. Because of the greater protection afforded by British copyright law, it was customary for American books, if they could find a British market, to appear in England before publication in the United States (Delbanco, p. 177). However, the English edition was extensively edited by Richard Bentley without Melville’s knowledge. The profanity and alleged irreverent references were toned down, and about 35 passages that later appeared in the American edition were deleted, including the epilogue, despite it accounting for Ishmael's survival - in its absence, a prominent review in the London Spectator criticized the whole novel, with a first-person narrative apparently ending with the death of all involved. Melville was most unhappy on discovering the changes: “seeing his book mutilated and mocked had the effect of angering Melville permanently against publishers and critics” (ibid., p. 178). Moreover, the late change of title by Melville from The Whale to Moby Dick was not enacted, as Bentley had already advertised the work under the former title. Probably to placate Melville, Bentley inserted a half-title page in the first volume only, which reads “The Whale; or, Moby Dick”. The American edition followed with the altered title and in a single volume. Both editions sold poorly, and in 1853, remaining sheets of the English edition were reissued with a new title page bearing that date.
It was only after Melville’s lifetime that the novel was recognized as a masterpiece of American, and indeed world, literature. “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).