Felicity's Mini History Lessons : The First

Today in Felicity’s Mini History Lessons, a pick-me-up for all struggling artists out there, don't worry, you can always be famous after you've died!

On November 14th 1851 American novelist Herman Melville’s book Moby-Dick was published in the United States by Harper & Brothers having been released in the UK on October 18th of the same year under the title of The Whale by publisher Richard Bentley. For the American publication, Melville added the epilogue after British reviewers expressed frustration that the UK release was narrated by a character who had not survived the shipwreck and therefore could not be narrating the story. In the end, this did not save Moby-Dick from American critics, many of whom relied upon British reviews to formulate their opinion. The first American review released by the Boston Post states "We have read nearly one half of this book, and are satisfied that the London Athenaeum is right in calling it 'an ill-compounded mixture of romance and matter-of-fact'" and stated “'The Whale' is not worth the money asked for it, either as a literary work or as a mass of printed paper.” The British release sold 500 copies, the American release only 3,215, a total of 3,715 as opposed to Melville’s first novel Typee whose combined sales totaled 16,320. The novel was considered a failure and though Melville continued to write and publish, he returned to New York to work as a customs inspector, a job he held for over 20 years.

Melville died in 1891, a forgotten footnote in the history of the written word.

In the 1920s, literary underground movements rediscovered Moby-Dick and scholars took an interest. In 1921 Carl Van Doren called Moby-Dick a “pinnacle of American Romanticism”. In 1923 D.H. Lawrence praised Moby-Dick as a work of first order even though he had read the original UK release lacking the epilogue. In 2015, a first edition of Moby-Dick was valued at 60,000$.

In 1924, 33 years after Melville’s death, Billy Budd, Sailor, Melville’s final novel, which had taken him over five years to complete, was finally published.