Piazza Tales First Edition - Herman Melville - Bauman Rare Books

Piazza Tales

Herman MELVILLE

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Piazza Tales

Piazza Tales

“I WOULD PREFER NOT TO”: FIRST EDITION OF MELVILLE’S FIRST AND ONLY COLLECTION OF SHORT STORIES, INCLUDING HIS SHORT FICTION MASTERPIECES, “BARTLEBY THE SCRIVENER” AND “BENITO CERENO”

MELVILLE, Herman. The Piazza Tales. New York: Dix & Edwards, 1856. Octavo, original purple blind- and gilt-stamped cloth recased. Housed in a custom clamshell box.

First edition of Melville’s first collection of short stories (the only one published within his lifetime), including three classics of American short fiction: “Bartleby the Scrivener,” “The Encantadas,” and “Benito Cereno.”

The stories collected here represent “Melville’s finest achievements in short fiction” (Hart, 259). The striking pessimism encountered in these tales reflects the downturn that Melville’s literary career had taken at the time. Despite the fame and popular following which Melville enjoyed with his early novels (notably Typee and Omoo), Moby Dick appeared in 1851 to virtually no critical or popular acclaim. The Piazza Tales did little to rescue its author from his slide into obscurity; it is unlikely that the author ever earned any royalties from this book, and its failure probably helped drive the American publisher out of business. With the exception of the title story, which was written by Melville specifically for this collection, the pieces here first appeared in Putnam’s Monthly Magazine in the 1850s, either anonymously or under a pseudonym. Among the most notable of the six stories is “Bartleby the Scrivener,” an acknowledged classic of American short fiction and the short story form. Following The Piazza Tales, Melville would publish only two more works of prose (The Confidence Man, 1857, and Billy Budd, finished shortly before his death) and instead focused on his poetry. With seven pages of publisher’s advertisements at rear. BAL 13669. Sadleir, Excursions, 231. Owner signatures (including one to title page) and bookstamps.

Occasional light damp staining to margins. Light wear to cloth extremities and shallow chipping to toned spine; some wear to rear board. A very good copy.

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Aquatint Copperplate process by which the plate is “bitten” by exposure to acid. By changing the areas of the plate that are exposed and the length of time the plate is submerged in the acid bath, the engraver can obtain fine and varying shades of gray that closely resemble watercolor washes. Although the name contains the word “tint”, this is a black-and-white printing process; aquatint plates can often be hand colored, however.
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