Editor’s Note

This is the complete text of Moby-Dick; or, The Whale as first published by Harper & Brothers, New York, in November 1851. A month earlier Richard Bentley had issued the book in London, in three volumes and under the title The Whale, with passages cut and without the Epilogue. This edition follows the American text, as found in a public-domain digital transcription, and so includes the Epilogue and every passage the London edition left out. Melville’s “Etymology” and “Extracts” stand before the first chapter, as they do in the first edition, and his own twenty-two footnotes are printed at the end of the chapters to which they belong.

The spelling, punctuation, and paragraphing of the source are kept, including Melville’s forms such as harpooneer, to-day, and Leviathanic. Chapter headings are given as in the source (“CHAPTER 1. Loomings.”). Only the typography has been brought to the series style: curly quotation marks and apostrophes, closed em dashes, italic type where the transcription marked it, and a plain ornament for breaks within chapters. The asterisks Melville uses to mark omissions inside quotations are kept. In Chapter 24 the transcription carries two note marks for a single footnote; the note is attached at the first mark, “royal fish,” and the second mark is dropped. No other change has been made.

Removed from the source: the transcription’s header and license, its title page and table of contents, a transcriber’s note, and all distributor notices. Nothing has been added to the text.