Melville's Marginalia Online

navigation:

zoom:

hide highlighting

Browse Volumes
Search
Policies
Staff
Media
Events
Contact and Support
Photo Credits
Acknowledgments
Melville@200

Copy link to this page

Display all Marked and inscribed Inscribed

Spine

Front matter

Front board

Front pastedown (with institutional label)

Center leaf] institutional label

Front free endpaper

Front free endpaper verso

Upper leaf] unattributed pencil inscription.

Front flyleaf

Front flyleaf verso

Publisher's advertisements (pp. 1-2)

Introduction (pp. 1-2)

Unmarked pages 1-2

[001]

002

Ch. I. General Rules (pp. 3-16)

Unmarked pages 3-16

Ch. II. Our Relation to Ourselves (pp. 17-68)

Unmarked pages (17-21)

3-11] pencil score.

Unmarked pages (23-24)

023

024

025 (marked)

15-24] pencil score.

Unmarked pages 26-32

7-12] unattributed pencil annotation:
"True‒But
only in
part!
E".

Commentary

033 (annotated)

close window

The identity of "E" is not established. Melville's wife Elizabeth Shaw Melville is naturally a strong candidate for the source of this annotation, but Elizabeth's typical practice of signing her initials in her husband's documents was "ESM," and not in the style of letter formation displayed here. Their grandaughter Eleanor Melville Metcalf is a second possibility, but the handwriting does not conform well to her hand. Letter form variations within the annotation itself leave open the possibility that more than one hand is represented, indicating an original annotator, who inscribed "True," and a later reader who added the content that follows. Pencil marginalia applied elsewhere in this section of the book do conform to Elizabeth Shaw Melville's style of marking and support the attribution of "True," at least, to her hand.

Unmarked pages 34-35

034

035

036 (marked)

18-19] unattributed pencil parentheses.

Commentary

036 (marked)

close window

The opening and closing parentheses on this page are more characteristic of Melville's wife Elizabeth Shaw Melville's marking practices than of Herman Melville's, and they may be in her hand.

Unmarked pages 37-44

5-6] unattributed pencil parentheses.

Commentary

045 (marked)

close window

The opening and closing parentheses on this page are more characteristic of Melville's wife Elizabeth Shaw Melville's marking practices than of Herman Melville's, and they may be in her hand.

Unmarked pages 46-68

Ch. III. Our Relation to Others (pp. 69-108)

Unmarked pages 69-91

4-31] pencil broken score.

093 (marked)

10-13] pencil score.

094

095 (marked)

6-8] pencil checkmark.
14-17] erased pencil score.
15] erased pencil underline.

(enhanced image)

096 (marked)

8-10] erased pencil score.
15-17] pencil score.

(enhanced image)

097 (marked)

4-21] erased pencil score.
22-25] erased pencil score.
25-28] erased pencil score.
28-31] erased pencil score.
32] erased pencil underline.

(enhanced image)

098 (marked)

1-12] two pencil checkmarks.

Commentary

098 (marked)

close window

Whereas examples are rare in his marginalia, in the judgment of the editors the instance of erased marginalia at 1-12 illustrates Melville's practice of marking a passage inclusively by positioning identical marking types at its beginning and end points, rather than by scoring the passage continuously. See Melville's marginalia in Thomas Beale's The Natural History of the Sperm Whale (185) for a comparable instance.

(enhanced image)

099 (marked)

25-26] pencil checkmark.

100 (marked)

29-32] pencil score.

Unmarked pages 101-108

Ch. IV. Worldly Fortune (pp. 109-125)

Unmarked pages 109-120

12-18] pencil score.
17-19] unattributed pencil ticks.
19-22] pencil score.
23-25] pencil score.

Commentary

121 (marked)

close window

The lightly inscribed pencil ticks at 19-22 appear here in the company of scores that are attributable to Melville and alongside content that interested him. But they are not characteristic of Melville's style of marking and may be in the hand of Elizabeth Shaw Melville, whose hand may be represented on pp. 33, 36, and 45 of this copy.

122 (marked)

24-27] erased pencil score.

(enhanced image)

Unmarked pages 123-125

123

124

125

Ch. V. The Ages of Life (pp. 126-162)

Unmarked pages 126-162

[126]

127

128