The Essex and the whale : Melville’s Leviathan library and the birth of Moby-Dick

This fascinating anthology introduces readers to the literary side of Herman Melville's whaling world with an unprecedented collection of the original whaling texts from which Melville drew to create his masterpiece, Moby-Dick.

• Offers the full text of Owen Chase's Narrative of the Most Extraordinary and Distressing Shipwreck of the Whale-ship Essex and lengthy excerpts from the texts of Melville's other whaling books, gathered in one handy compendium

• Presents an introduction and primary source selection by internationally known Melville scholar R. D. Madison (associate general editor of the Northwestern-Newberry Edition of the Writings of Herman Melville)

• Provides readers with a stand-alone coherent picture of whaling lore and the response to the Essex disaster in Melville's time through the selection of primary sources