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Herman Melville, 1849
Details
Mardi, the Bradley Martin copy
Herman Melville, 1849
MELVILLE, Herman (1819-1891). Mardi: and A Voyage Thither. New York: Harper & Brothers, Publishers, 1849.
The Bradley Martin copy. A crisp, clean copy of the first American edition. Melville would describe Mardi in a 25 March 1848 letter to his English publisher John Murray, explaining his decision to write a romance rather than provide "documentary evidence" of his time at sea: "My object in now writing you — I should have done so ere this — is to inform you of a change in my determinations. To be blunt: the work I shall next publish will in downright earnest [be] a 'Romance of Polynesian Adventure'— But why this? The truth is, Sir, that the reiterated reputation of being a romancer in disguise has at last pricked me into a resolution to show those who may take any interest in the matter, that a real romance of mine is no Typee or Omoo, & is made of different stuff altogether [...] My romance I assure you is no dishwater nor its model borrowed from the Circulating Library. It is something new I assure you, original if nothing more." Melville closes the letter by chastising Murray: "[Y]ou ask again for 'documentary evidence' of my having been in the South Seas [...] Bless my soul, Sir, will you Britons not credit than American can be a gentleman & have read the Waverly Novels, tho every digit may have been in the tar-bucket?" (Horth, Correspondence, p.105-107). BAL 136858.
Two volumes, octavo (187 x 119mm). 8 pp. of adverts at rear of vol. 2 (marginal tear to dedication leaf in vol. 1 where partially unopened). Original green blind-stamped cloth, yellow coated endpapers (a little faint spotting to cloth); modern slipcase. Provenance: Edward Taylor (bookplate to front pastedown) – H. Bradley Martin (bookplate to front fly leaf; his sale, Sotheby's New York, 30 & 31 January 1990, lot 2148).
Herman Melville, 1849
MELVILLE, Herman (1819-1891). Mardi: and A Voyage Thither. New York: Harper & Brothers, Publishers, 1849.
The Bradley Martin copy. A crisp, clean copy of the first American edition. Melville would describe Mardi in a 25 March 1848 letter to his English publisher John Murray, explaining his decision to write a romance rather than provide "documentary evidence" of his time at sea: "My object in now writing you — I should have done so ere this — is to inform you of a change in my determinations. To be blunt: the work I shall next publish will in downright earnest [be] a 'Romance of Polynesian Adventure'— But why this? The truth is, Sir, that the reiterated reputation of being a romancer in disguise has at last pricked me into a resolution to show those who may take any interest in the matter, that a real romance of mine is no Typee or Omoo, & is made of different stuff altogether [...] My romance I assure you is no dishwater nor its model borrowed from the Circulating Library. It is something new I assure you, original if nothing more." Melville closes the letter by chastising Murray: "[Y]ou ask again for 'documentary evidence' of my having been in the South Seas [...] Bless my soul, Sir, will you Britons not credit than American can be a gentleman & have read the Waverly Novels, tho every digit may have been in the tar-bucket?" (Horth, Correspondence, p.105-107). BAL 136858.
Two volumes, octavo (187 x 119mm). 8 pp. of adverts at rear of vol. 2 (marginal tear to dedication leaf in vol. 1 where partially unopened). Original green blind-stamped cloth, yellow coated endpapers (a little faint spotting to cloth); modern slipcase. Provenance: Edward Taylor (bookplate to front pastedown) – H. Bradley Martin (bookplate to front fly leaf; his sale, Sotheby's New York, 30 & 31 January 1990, lot 2148).
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Heather Weintraub
Specialist, Books, Manuscripts, & Archives