White-Jacket;: or The World in a Man-of-War

London: Richard Bentley, 1853. Full Description:

MELVILLE, Herman. White-Jacket; or The World in a Man-of-War. London: Richard Bentley, 1853.

First edition, remainder issue (second issue). Consisting of the 1850 first edition sheets with the new cancel title-pages. Two octavo volumes (7 5/8 x 4 9/16 inches; 194 x 116 mm). iv, [2, contents], 322; iv, 315, [1, blank] pp.

Later half dark blue calf over marbled boards,. Spines elaborately tooled in blind and gilt. Red and green morocco spine labels, lettered in gilt. Top edge red. Newer endpapers. Some occasional finger smudging. Otherwise a near fine copy.

The manuscript was refused by Murray, Colbour, and Moxon, before Bentley offered two hundred pounds for the English rights to print 1000 copies. The American edition is subsequent to the English. Sometime in 1853 Bentley, in an effort to stimulate sales of Melville's books, ordered the remainder sheets of Redburn, The White Jacket and The Whale bound up in uniform red cloth bindings, with cancel title-pages.

"The book contains an account of Melville's experiences subsequent to those related in Omoo, as a sailor aboard the United States Frigate United States, from which he received his discharge in Boston, in October, 1844" (Minnegerode, M. Some Personal Letters of Herman Melville and A Bibliography, p. 155).

The work that immediately preceded Moby Dick.

In White-Jacket "Melville reveals his distaste for the brutal and inhumane practices of the ship officers in a realistic account of life aboard a U.S. Navy man-of-war. Some of the flogging scenes later persuaded Congress to abolish that punishment. The white jacket, for which the narrator is named, symbolic of his isolation and innocence, threatens to drown the hero when he falls from the mast into the water. Regaining his buoyancy, White Jacket frees himself from the jacket and rises to the surface, while the hated garment sinks forever. (Benét's Reader's Encyclopedia, 1111).

BAL 13661, note.

HBS 69111.

$3,000.