"ONE OF THE TWO OR THREE GREATEST AMERICAN FINE-PRESS BOOKS": ARION PRESS EDITION OF MOBY-DICK
(MOSER, Barry, illus.) MELVILLE, Herman. Moby-Dick; or, The Whale. San Francisco: Arion Press, 1979. Thick folio, original full blue morocco, uncut. Housed in original light blue cloth slipcase. $20,000.
Monumental fine press edition of Melville's classic, illustrated with 100 wood engravings by Barry Moser, one of 265 copies printed, only 250 of which were for sale.
Arguably the greatest single work in American literature, Moby-Dick was initially "a complete practical failure, misunderstood by the critics and ignored by the public; and in 1853 the Harper's fire destroyed the plates of all his books and most of the copies remaining in stock (only about 60 copies of Moby-Dick survived the fire)… [Nevertheless,] Melville's permanent fame must always rest on the great prose epic of Moby-Dick, a book that has no equal in American literature for variety and splendor of style and for depth of feeling" (DAB).
This Arion Press production of the work, printed in handset type on handmade paper and illustrated by National Book Award-winning artist Barry Moser, is a masterpiece of book design and typography: "Many authorities rank this edition of Moby-Dick as one of the two or three greatest American fine-press books" (Biblio). "During a visit to San Francisco in October of 1977, Moser met Andrew Hoyem, founder of Arion Press, and agreed to produce a hundred engravings for the press's forthcoming Moby-Dick. Hoyem strictly controlled the project. He believed that 'pictorial presentation of the characters or interpretations of events would inhibit a reader's imagination' and therefore Moser's woodcuts 'depict only whales (live and dead, skeletal and blubbery), the objects, tools, and processes used in whaling, the types of vessels from which the hunts were conducted, the ports from which they sailed, and the seas over which they voyaged' (Edwards, "Very Like a Whale: Editions of Moby-Dick"). Arion Press Catalogue Archive #6. Affixed slip with inked owner name.
Spine and slipcase showing slight toning and wear. A near-fine copy of this scarce and desirable edition.