You may think you've read Moby-Dick, but this new edition reveals a text you've never seen: the first American edition as Melville wrote and edited it himself, enhanced with unprecedented discussions of the revisions which Melville, his British editors, and 20th-century scholars later made to his book.


Bryant and Springer, both Melville scholars, bring this classic into the 21st century with the first critical edition in forty years - presented in a beautiful design which wears its elegant scholarship lightly for the general reader. Throughout the book, a special typeface indicates passages in Moby-Dick that were later revised. On-page revision narratives describe the exact changes Melville or his British editors made to the 1851 American text and those made for the 1967 Northwestern-Newberry edition (the version most widely read today), and explain the story behind each revision. Minimal footnotes offer lively explanations of key glossary and other terms right on the page, while more extensive, often entertaining Explanatory Notes and Revision Narratives are found at the back of the book. The result is that readers are immersed in the personal, social, and cultural context of Melville's novel and his writing process


An illuminating Introduction relates a history of the composition of Moby-Dick in the context of Melville's life, talent, and career. A glossary - running both on the page and at the end of the text - brings the language and otherwise arcane nautical terms to life. A number of the annotations reveal revisions that the British publisher required, essentially censoring the work. Thoroughly annotated, readers will now have, in one place, everything they need for a true understanding of this great American novel.