Moby-Dick: A Picture Voyage

Moby-Dick: A Picture Voyage

3.5 (34 ratings)
2002 · English · Hardcover · 1393 editions
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Description

"Moby-Dick: A Picture Voyage" is a sweeping pictorial odyssey of the whaling culture wrapped around a very readable and meticulously edited condensation of Melville's classic. Though abridged, the book maintains the drama and continuity of the original novel and is heavily illustrated with more than 200 original photographs and more than 150 paintings, drawings, engravings and artifacts. The selection of art represents some of the most important 19th-century marine painters and American fine art collections. Many images are drawn from logbooks, journals and scrimshaw belonging to mid-19th century whaler-artists. Rare photographs depict the port of New Bedford, whaling ships, life at sea, whaling methods, and items involved inthe business of whaling, which Melville researched and described in full detail.

The pictures in "Moby Dick: A Picture Voyage" are accompanied by short captions and compendia that feature quotes from the novel, information about the artwork, reflections of Melville's real-life whaling experiences, and biographical anecdotes. The majority of images chosen for the book were obtained from the New Bedford Whaling Museum and the museum's new Kendall Institute, the largest repository of whaling prints and artifacts in the world. Images were also obtained from private collections, rare books, old films and libraries.

"Moby-Dick: A Picture Voyage" will be the first version of the American classic to give readers a colorful look inside the real world of whaling as it was so eloquently described in Melville's own words. Noted Melville historian Laurie Robertson-Lorant, author of Melville: A Biography, has written the Introduction to the book. Editorial consultants include staff and curators at the New Bedford Whaling Museum and Kendall Institute.

Book Details

Format Hardcover
Pages 224 pages
Language English
Published Nov 14, 2002
Publisher Spinner Pubns Inc
ISBN-10 0932027733
ISBN-13 9780932027733

Reviews

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Group project goes wrong because the leader is way too into whales.funnily enough, that's happened to me in real life

March 21st 2026

I really hate it when I can't connect with some of the greatest works of art. Moby Dick is sadly one of these!I really tried to enjoy it, but couldn't! It's one of the very few classics which bore me to death. In my opinion, there's very little development when it comes to the characters and the story-line itself. I expected a lot from the author, especially that the book is thick. I told myself here's a story that's going to keep me entertained for a while, but instead I only found an annoyingly massive amount of fishery technicalities. A flat bulk of information to fill the chapters so that the real story can be rewritten in no more than a quarter of the actual number of pages. What bugs me up about this is the uselessness of such details in connection with the direction in which the story moves. The reader could perfectly do without most of that massive amount of waling fishery details! Besides, the characters are mostly flat. There's neither will nor power of will directing their steps and guiding their actions. Take the narrator as an instance. He's a passive observer of everything; merely a man relating his inexistence in the tale. Ahab is another in spite of all his depicted mightiness which remains but empty words. What is he if not simply a stubborn, half-mad, old captain directing a set of dummies who are so flat and two dimensional that I can't even attempt to put them to scrutiny. One thing I know for sure, I am never going to read that book again as I am already giving it away to any student in need of a free copy! And apart from the occasional beauty of its prose and the images which come to the forth every now and then, I regret spending so much time reading it.

February 18th 2026

Call me Ishmael. Thus starts the greatest American novel. Melville said himself that he wanted to write a mighty book about a mighty theme and so he did. It is a story of one man's obsessive revenge-journey against the white whale, Moby-Dick, who injured him in an earlier meeting.

February 1st 2026
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