Editing Moby-Dick (section)

==Publication history==
Melville first proposed the British publication in a June 27, 1850, letter to [[Richard Bentley (publisher)|Richard Bentley]], London publisher of his earlier works. Textual scholar [[G. Thomas Tanselle]] said that, in these earlier books, American proof sheets had been sent to the British publisher and that publication in the United States did not commence until the work had been set in type and published in England. This procedure was intended to provide the best (though still uncertain) claim for the UK copyright of an American work.{{sfnb|Melville|1988}} In the case of ''Moby-Dick'', Melville had taken almost a year longer than promised, and could not rely on Harpers to prepare the proofs as they had done for the earlier books. Indeed, Harpers had denied him an advance, and since he was already in debt to them for almost $700, he was forced to borrow money and to arrange for the typesetting and plating himself.<ref>Cited by Tanselle (1988), 660–661</ref> John Bryant suggests that he did so "to reduce the number of hands playing with his text".<ref>Bryant (2006), 560</ref>

The final stages of composition overlapped with the early stages of publication. At the end of May 1851, Melville delivered the bulk of his manuscript to Harper's for plating and printing of proof sheets.<ref>Robertson-Lorant (1996), 271</ref> In June, he wrote to Hawthorne that he was in New York to "work and slave on my 'Whale' while it is driving through the press".<ref name="Cited in Tanselle (1988), 663">Cited in Tanselle (1988), 663.</ref> He was staying with Allan and Sophia in a small room to correct proofs, and to (re)write the closing pages.<ref>Robertson-Lorant (1996), 272</ref> By the end of the month, "wearied with the long delay of printers", Melville came back to finish work on the book in Pittsfield. Three weeks later, the typesetting was almost done, as he announced to Bentley on July 20: "I am now passing thro' the press, the closing sheets of my new work".<ref name="Cited in Tanselle (1988), 663"/> While Melville was simultaneously writing and proofreading what had been set, the corrected proof would be plated, that is, the type fixed in final form. Since earlier chapters were already plated when he was revising the later ones, Melville must have "felt restricted in the kinds of revisions that were feasible".<ref>Tanselle (1988), 663</ref>

On July 3, 1851, Bentley offered Melville £150 and "half profits", that is, half the profits that remained after the expenses of production and advertising. On July 20, Melville accepted, after which Bentley drew up a contract on August 13.<ref>Tanselle (1988), 665.</ref> Melville signed and returned the contract in early September, and then went to New York with the proof sheets, made from the finished plates, which he sent to London by his brother Allan on September 10. For over a month, these proofs had been in Melville's possession, and because the book would be set anew in London he could devote all his time to correcting and revising them. He still had no American publisher, so the usual hurry about getting the British publication to precede the American was not present.<ref name="Tanselle 1988, 667">Tanselle (1988), 667</ref> Only on September 12 was the Harper publishing contract signed.<ref>Tanselle (1988), 661</ref> Bentley received the proof sheets with Melville's corrections and revisions marked on them on September 24. He published the book less than four weeks later.

In the October 1851 issue of ''[[Harper's Magazine|Harper's New Monthly Magazine]]'' "The Town Ho's Story" was published, with a footnote reading: "From 'The Whale'. The title of a new work by Mr. Melville, in the press of Harper and Brothers, and now publishing in London by Mr. Bentley."<ref>Quoted in Tanselle (1988), 671</ref>

On October 18, the British edition, ''The Whale'', was published in a printing of only 500 copies,<ref>{{Cite web| url = http://blog.loa.org/2010/10/october-18-1851-melvilles-moby-dick-is.html | title = Reader's Almanac | publisher = Library of America blog| date = 18 October 2010| access-date = 18 October 2019}}</ref> fewer than Melville's previous books. Their slow sales had convinced Bentley that a smaller number was more realistic. The London ''Morning Herald'' on October 20 printed the earliest known review.<ref>Tanselle (1988), 683–84</ref> On November 14, the American edition, ''Moby-Dick'', was published and the same day reviewed in both the Albany ''Argus'' and the ''Morning Courier and New-York Enquirer''. On November 19, Washington received the copy to be deposited for copyright purposes. The first American printing of 2,915 copies was almost the same as the first of ''Mardi'', but the first printing of Melville's other three Harper books had been a thousand copies more.<ref>Tanselle (1988), 686–87</ref>

===Melville's revisions and British editorial revisions===
[[File:The Whale or Moby Dick Vol 1 1851.jpg|thumb|The whale or Moby Dick (half-title page), Herman Melville, 1851]]
The British edition, set by Bentley's printers from the American page proofs with Melville's revisions and corrections, differs from the American edition in over 700 wordings and thousands of punctuation and spelling changes.<ref name="Tanselle 1988, 667"/>

Excluding the preliminaries and the one extract, the three volumes of the British edition came to 927 pages<ref>Tanselle (1988), 685</ref> and the single American volume to 635 pages.<ref name="Tanselle 1988, 687">Tanselle (1988), 687</ref> Accordingly, the dedication to Hawthorne in the American edition—"this book is inscribed to"—became "these volumes are inscribed to" in the British.<ref>Cited in Tanselle (1988), 673</ref> The table of contents in the British edition generally follows the actual chapter titles in the American edition, but 19 titles in the American table of contents differ from the titles above the chapters themselves. This list was probably drawn up by Melville himself: the titles of chapters describing encounters of the ''Pequod'' with other ships had—apparently to stress the parallelisms between these chapters—been standardized to "The Pequod meets the ...," with the exception of the already published 'The Town-Ho's Story'.<ref>Tanselle (1988), 675–76</ref>

For unknown reasons, the "Etymology" and "Extracts" were moved to the end of the third volume.<ref name="Tanselle 1988, 678">Tanselle (1988), 678</ref> An epigraph from ''Paradise Lost'', taken from the second of the two quotations from that work in the American edition, appears on the title page of each of the three British volumes. Melville's involvement with this rearrangement is not clear: if it was Bentley's gesture toward accommodating Melville, as Tanselle suggests,<ref name="Tanselle 1988, 678"/> its selection put an emphasis on the quotation Melville might not have agreed with.

The largest of Melville's revisions is the addition to the British edition of a 139-word footnote in Chapter 87 explaining the word "gally". The edition also contains six short phrases and some 60 single words lacking in the American edition.<ref>Tanselle (1988), 772</ref> In addition, about 35 changes produce genuine improvements, as opposed to mere corrections: "Melville may not have made every one of the changes in this category, but it seems certain that he was responsible for the great majority of them."<ref>Tanselle (1988), 789</ref>

===British censorship and missing "Epilogue"===
The British publisher hired one or more revisers who were, in the evaluation of scholar Steven Olsen-Smith, responsible for "unauthorized changes ranging from typographical errors and omissions to acts of outright censorship".<ref>Olsen-Smith (2008), 97</ref> According to biographer Robertson-Lorant, the result was that the British edition was "badly mutilated".<ref name="Robertson-Lorant 1996, 277">Robertson-Lorant (1996), 277</ref> The expurgations fall into four categories, ranked according to the apparent priorities of the censor:

# Sacrilegious passages, more than 1,200 words: Attributing human failures to God was grounds for excision or revision, as was comparing human shortcomings to divine ones. For example, in chapter 28, "Ahab", Ahab stands with "a crucifixion in his face" was revised to "an apparently eternal anguish";<ref>Cited in Tanselle (1988), 681 (citation), 784</ref>
# Sexual matters, including the sex life of whales and even Ishmael's worried anticipation of the nature of Queequeg's underwear, as well as allusions to fornication or harlots, and "our hearts' honeymoon" (in relation to Ishmael and Queequeg).<ref>Tanselle (1988), 682, 784–85</ref> Chapter 95, however, "The Cassock", referring to the whale's genital organ, was untouched, perhaps because of Melville's indirect language.
# Remarks "belittling royalty or implying a criticism of the British": This meant the exclusion of the complete chapter 25, a "Postscript" on the use of sperm oil at coronations;<ref>Tanselle (1988), 682, 785</ref>
# Perceived grammatical or stylistic anomalies were treated with "a highly conservative interpretation of rules of 'correctness{{'"}}.<ref>Tanselle (1988), 682, 785–87</ref>

These expurgations also meant that any corrections or revisions Melville had marked upon these passages are now lost.

The final difference in the material not already plated is that the "Epilogue", thus Ishmael's miraculous survival, is omitted from the British edition. Obviously, the epilogue was not an afterthought supplied too late for the edition, for it is referred to in "The Castaway": "in the sequel of the narrative, it will then be seen what like abandonment befell myself."<ref>Cited in Tanselle (1988), 679</ref> Why the "Epilogue" is missing is unknown. Since nothing objectionable was in it, most likely it was somehow lost by Bentley's printer when the "Etymology" and "Extracts" were moved.<ref>Tanselle (1988), 678–79</ref>

===Last-minute change of title===
After the sheets had been sent, Melville changed the title. Probably late in September, Allan sent Bentley two pages of proof with a letter of which only a draft survives which informed him that Melville "has determined upon a new title & dedication—Enclosed you have proof of both—It is thought here that the new title will be a better ''selling'' title". After expressing his hope that Bentley would receive this change in time, Allan said that "Moby-Dick is a legitimate title for the book, being the name given to a particular whale who if I may so express myself is the hero of the volume".<ref name="Cited in Tanselle (1988), 671">Cited in Tanselle (1988), 671</ref> Biographer Hershel Parker suggests that the reason for the change was that Harper's had two years earlier published a book with a similar title, ''The Whale and His Captors''.<ref>Parker (1996), 863</ref>

Changing the title was not a problem for the American edition, since the [[running head]]s throughout the book only showed the titles of the chapters, and the title page, which would include the publisher's name, could not be printed until a publisher was found. In October ''Harper's New Monthly Magazine'' printed chapter 54, "The Town-Ho's Story", with a footnote saying: "From ''The Whale.'' The title of a new work by Mr. Melville".<ref name="Cited in Tanselle (1988), 671"/> The one surviving leaf of proof, "a 'trial' page bearing the title 'The Whale' and the Harper imprint,"<ref name="Cited in Tanselle (1988), 672">Cited in Tanselle (1988), 672</ref> shows that at this point, after the publisher had been found, the original title still stood. When Allan's letter arrived, no sooner than early October, Bentley had already announced ''The Whale'' in both the ''Athenaem'' and the ''Spectator'' of October 4 and 11.<ref>Tanselle (1988), 673</ref> <!-- The following is correct: see TalkPage October 8, 2014 --> Probably to accommodate Melville, Bentley inserted a [[Half title|half-title page]] in the first volume only, which reads "The Whale; or, Moby Dick".<ref name="Cited in Tanselle (1988), 672"/>

===Sales and earnings===
The British printing of 500 copies sold fewer than 300 within the first four months. In 1852, some remaining sheets were bound in a cheaper casing, and in 1853, enough sheets were still left to issue a cheap edition in one volume. Bentley recovered only half on the £150 he advanced Melville, whose share from actual sales would have been just £38, and he did not print a new edition.<ref name="Tanselle 1988, 688">Tanselle (1988), 688</ref> Harper's first printing was 2,915 copies, including the standard 125 review copies. The selling price was $1.50, about a fifth of the price of the British three-volume edition.<ref name="Tanselle 1988, 687"/>

About 1,500 copies were sold within 11 days, and then sales slowed down to less than 300 the next year. After three years, the first edition was still available, almost 300 copies of which were lost when a fire broke out at the firm in December 1853. In 1855, a second printing of 250 copies was issued, in 1863, a third of 253 copies, and finally in 1871, a fourth printing of 277 copies, which sold so slowly that no new printing was ordered.<ref name="Tanselle 1988, 688"/> ''Moby-Dick'' was out of print during the last four years of Melville's life, having sold 2,300 in its first year and a half and on average 27 copies a year for the next 34 years, totaling 3,215 copies.

Melville's earnings from the book add up to $1,260: the £150 advance from Bentley was equivalent to $703, and the American printings earned him $556, which was $100 less than he earned from any of his five previous books.<ref name="Tanselle 1988, 689">Tanselle (1988), 689</ref> Melville's widow received another $81 when the United States Book Company issued the book and sold almost 1,800 copies between 1892 and 1898.<ref name="Tanselle 1988, 689"/>