Moby Dick

"Better to sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunk Christian."

" Moby Dick is the story of Captain Ahab's quest to avenge the whale that 'reaped' his leg. The quest is an obsession and the novel is a diabolical study of how a man becomes a fanatic.

But it is also a hymn to democracy. Bent as the crew is on Ahab's appalling crusade, it is equally the image of a co-operative community at work: all hands dependent on all hands, each individual responsible for the security of each.

Among the crew is Ishmael, the novel's narrator, ordinary sailor, and extraordinary reader. Digressive, allusive, vulgar, transcendent, the story Ishmael tells is above all an education: in the practice of whaling, in the art of writing. Expanding to equal his 'mighty theme' – not only the whale but all things sublime."

First UK edition thus; 8vo (20 x 14 cm); colour frontispiece and other illustrations by Rowland Hilder, very small tear to edge of p169, slight offsetting to p360, else near-fine condition; fine binding by Bayntun Riviere, modern full blue morocco with one-line gilt-panelled border, spine in 6 compartments with lettering and ship emblems in gilt, all edges gilt, gilt dentelles, cockerel endpapers, light signs of wear to extremities, slight fading to spine, otherwise very good; 360pp.