Documentary Note on Melville's Marginalia in Thomas Beale's The Natural History of the Sperm Whale.

Herman Melville acquired his copy of Thomas Beale's The Natural History of the Sperm Whale on July 10, 1850, according to his autograph inscription on the half-title, and presumably he possessed the copy until his death in 1891. The book displays evidence of having afterwards been among the holdings of an institutional library. Extensive erasures of Melville's marginalia had already been performed when the copy first came to light in the mid 1930s, as reported by Randall (208). Its subsequent ownership by collectors is confirmed by internal and external documentation, including the bookplate of Frank J. Hogan on the front pastedown of the copy. From the sale of Hogan's library in 1945 it was acquired by Perc Brown, who first made the volume available to scholars (Vincent 128). It later came into the possession of Alfred C. Berol, who presented it to Houghton Library in 1960, as documented by a gift label on the front pastedown.

All of the annotations and notes in the book, whether unerased or erased, display significant characteristics of Melville's hand and are verifiably by him. The markings also conform recognizably to the style and character of markings in other books known to survive from his library. Whereas these lack the firm corroborative quality of recognizable letter forms, a majority of markings in the book are tied to passages of text that bear demonstrable influence on the composition of Moby-Dick, and this traceable quality also argues strongly that they are by Melville. For fuller explanation of the provenance of the volume and authenticity of its marginalia, see Olsen-Smith (5-9), whose discussion of the book's material features draws on bibliographical analysis provided by Dennis C. Marnon.

Publication: 2010, Melville's Marginalia Online. First partially transcribed by Walker Cowen, Melville's Marginalia, 2 vols., Harvard Dissertations in American and English Literature (New York: Garland, 1987), 1:175-198 (Cowen's dissertation was completed in 1965). Transcribed in a surrogate format at Melville's Marginalia Online, 2006.

Selected studies that cite this copy: Howard P. Vincent, The Trying-out of Moby-Dick (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1949). "Explanatory Notes" in Herman Melville, Moby-Dick, or The Whale, eds. Luther S. Mansfield and Howard P. Vincent (New York: Hendricks House, 1952), 569-832. David A. Randall, Dukedom Large Enough (New York: Random House, 1969), 208-209. Robert K. Wallace, Melville and Turner: Spheres of Love and Fright (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1992). Steven Olsen-Smith, "Melville’s Copy of Thomas Beale's The Natural History of the Sperm Whale and the Composition of Moby-Dick," Harvard Library Bulletin 21.3 (Fall 2010): 1-77.

Editions of Moby-Dick referenced in the commentary to this digital copy: Moby-Dick. Eds. Harrison Hayford, Hershel Parker, and G. Thomas Tanselle. Evanston and Chicago: Northwestern University Press and the Newberry Library. 1988 [NN]; Moby-Dick. Eds. Hershel Parker and Harrison Hayford. New York: W.W. Norton, 2002 [NCE]; Moby-Dick. Eds. John Bryant and Haskell Springer. New York: Longman, 2007 [LCRE].