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Moby-Dick

or, The Whale

Part of Modern Library Classics

Author Herman Melville
Introduction by Elizabeth Hardwick, Rockwell Kent
Paperback
$16.00 US
Random House Group | Modern Library
5.22"W x 7.97"H x 1.65"D  
On sale Oct 10, 2000 | 896 Pages | 978-0-679-78327-5
| Grades 9-12 + AP/IB
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  • English Language Arts > Genre: Fiction > Action & Adventure > Sea Stories
  • English Language Arts > Genre: Fiction > Animals
  • English Language Arts > Genre: Fiction > Historical Fiction: United States > 19th Century
  • English Language Arts > Literature: American > Pre-20th Century
  • About
  • Author
  • Excerpt
First published in 1851, Melville's masterpiece is, in Elizabeth Hardwick's words, "the greatest novel in American literature." The saga of Captain Ahab and his monomaniacal pursuit of the white whale remains a peerless adventure story but one full of mythic grandeur, poetic majesty, and symbolic power. Filtered through the consciousness of the novel's narrator, Ishmael, Moby-Dick draws us into a universe full of fascinating characters and stories, from the noble cannibal Queequeg to the natural history of whales, while reaching existential depths that excite debate and contemplation to this day.

This Modern Library Paperback Classics edition contains original illustrations by Rockwell Kent and commentary that includes excerpts from one of Melville's letters to Hawthorne.
Herman Melville was born in New York City in 1819. When his father died, he was forced to leave school and find work. After passing through some minor clerical jobs, the eighteen-year-old young man shipped out to sea, first on a short cargo trip, then, at twenty-one, on a three-year South Sea whaling venture. From the experiences accumulated on this voyage would come the material for his early books, Typee (1846) and Omoo (1847), as well as for such masterpieces as Moby-Dick (1851), Pierre (1852), The Piazza Tales (1856), and Billy Budd, Sailor, and Other Stories (posthumous, 1924). Though the first two novels—popular romantic adventures—sold well, Melville's more serious writing failed to attract a large audience, perhaps because it attacked the current philosophy of transcendentalism and its espoused "self-reliance." (As he made clear in the savagely comic The Confidence Man (1857), Melville thought very little of Emersonian philosophy.) He spent his later years working as a customs inspector on the New York docks, writing only poems comprising Battle-Pieces (1866). He died in 1891, leaving Billy Budd, Sailor, and Other Stories unpublished. View titles by Herman Melville
CHAPTER 1



LOOMINGS



Call me Ishmael. Some years ago--never mind how long precisely--having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen, and regulating the circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off--then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball. With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the ship. There is nothing surprising in this. If they but knew it, almost all men in their degree, some time or other, cherish very nearly the same feelings towards the ocean with me.

There now is your insular city of the Manhattoes, belted round by wharves as Indian isles by coral reefs--commerce surrounds it with her surf. Right and left, the streets take you waterward. Its extreme down-town is the battery, where that noble mole is washed by waves, and cooled by breezes, which a few hours previous were out of sight of land. Look at the crowds of water-gazers there.

Circumambulate the city of a dreamy Sabbath afternoon. Go from Corlears Hook to Coenties Slip, and from thence, by Whitehall, northward. What do you see?--Posted like silent sentinels all around the town, stand thousands upon thousands of mortal men fixed in ocean reveries. Some leaning against the spiles; some seated upon the pier-heads; some looking over the bulwarks of ships from China; some high aloft in the rigging, as if striving to get a still better seaward peep. But these are all landsmen; of week days pent up in lath and plaster--tied to counters, nailed to benches, clinched to desks. How then is this? Are the green fields gone? What do they here?

But look! here come more crowds, pacing straight for the water, and seemingly bound for a dive. Strange! Nothing will content them but the extremest limit of the land; loitering under the shady lee of yonder warehouses will not suffice. No. They must get just as nigh the water as they possibly can without falling in. And there they stand--miles of them--leagues. Inlanders all, they come from lanes and alleys, streets and avenues--north, east, south, and west. Yet here they all unite. Tell me, does the magnetic virtue of the needles of the compasses of all those ships attract them thither?

Once more. Say, you are in the country; in some high land of lakes. Take almost any path you please, and ten to one it carries you down in a dale, and leaves you there by a pool in the stream. There is magic in it. Let the most absentminded of men be plunged in his deepest reveries--stand that man on his legs, set his feet a-going, and he will infallibly lead you to water, if water there be in all that region. Should you ever be athirst in the great American desert, try this experiment, if your caravan happen to be supplied with a metaphysical professor. Yes, as every one knows, meditation and water are wedded for ever.

But here is an artist. He desires to paint you the dreamiest, shadiest, quietest, most enchanting bit of romantic landscape in all the valley of the Saco. What is the chief element he employs? There stand his trees, each with a hollow trunk, as if a hermit and a crucifix were within; and here sleeps his meadow, and there sleep his cattle; and up from yonder cottage goes a sleepy smoke. Deep into distant woodlands winds a mazy way, reaching to overlapping spurs of mountains bathed in their hill-side blue. But though the picture lies thus tranced, and though this pine-tree shakes down its sighs like leaves upon this shepherd's head, yet all were vain, unless the shepherd's eye were fixed upon the magic stream before him. Go visit the Prairies in June, when for scores on scores of miles you wade knee-deep among Tiger-lilies--what is the one charm wanting?--Water--there is not a drop of water there! Were Niagara but a cataract of sand, would you travel your thousand miles to see it? Why did the poor poet of Tennessee, upon suddenly receiving two handfuls of silver, deliberate whether to buy him a coat, which he sadly needed, or invest his money in a pedestrian trip to Rockaway Beach? Why is almost every robust healthy boy with a robust healthy soul in him, at some time or other crazy to go to sea? Why upon your first voyage as a passenger, did you yourself feel such a mystical vibration, when first told that you and your ship were now out of sight of land? Why did the old Persians hold the sea holy? Why did the Greeks give it a separate deity, and own brother of Jove? Surely all this is not without meaning. And still deeper the meaning of that story of Narcissus, who because he could not grasp the tormenting, mild image he saw in the fountain, plunged into it and was drowned. But that same image, we ourselves see in all rivers and oceans. It is the image of the ungraspable phantom of life; and this is the key to it all.

Now, when I say that I am in the habit of going to sea whenever I begin to grow hazy about the eyes, and begin to be over conscious of my lungs, I do not mean to have it inferred that I ever go to sea as a passenger. For to go as a passenger you must needs have a purse, and a purse is but a rag unless you have something in it. Besides, passengers get sea-sick--grow quarrelsome--don't sleep of nights--do not enjoy themselves much, as a general thing;--no, I never go as a passenger; nor, though I am something of a salt, do I ever go to sea as a Commodore, or a Captain, or a Cook. I abandon the glory and distinction of such offices to those who like them. For my part, I abominate all honorable respectable toils, trials, and tribulations of every kind whatsoever. It is quite as much as I can do to take care of myself, without taking care of ships, barques, brigs, schooners, and what not. And as for going as cook,--though I confess there is considerable glory in that, a cook being a sort of officer on ship-board--yet, somehow, I never fancied broiling fowls;--though once broiled, judiciously buttered, and judgmatically salted and peppered, there is no one who will speak more respectfully, not to say reverentially, of a broiled fowl than I will. It is out of the idolatrous dotings of the old Egyptians upon broiled ibis and roasted river horse, that you see the mummies of those creatures in their huge bake-houses the pyramids.

No, when I go to sea, I go as a simple sailor, right before the mast, plumb down into the forecastle, aloft there to the royal mast-head. True, they rather order me about some, and make me jump from spar to spar, like a grasshopper in a May meadow. And at first, this sort of thing is unpleasant enough. It touches one's sense of honor, particularly if you come of an old established family in the land, the Van Rensselaers, or Randolphs, or Hardicanutes. And more than all, if just previous to putting your hand into the tar-pot, you have been lording it as a country schoolmaster, making the tallest boys stand in awe of you. The transition is a keen one, I assure you, from a schoolmaster to a sailor, and requires a strong decoction of Seneca and the Stoics to enable you to grin and bear it. But even this wears off in time.

What of it, if some old hunks of a sea-captain orders me to get a broom and sweep down the decks? What does that indignity amount to, weighed, I mean, in the scales of the New Testament? Do you think the archangel Gabriel thinks anything the less of me, because I promptly and respectfully obey that old hunks in that particular instance? Who ain't a slave? Tell me that. Well, then, however the old sea-captains may order me about--however they may thump and punch me about, I have the satisfaction of knowing that it is all right; that everybody else is one way or other served in much the same way--either in a physical or metaphysical point of view, that is; and so the universal thump is passed round, and all hands should rub each other's shoulder-blades, and be content.

Again, I always go to sea as a sailor, because they make a point of paying me for my trouble, whereas they never pay passengers a single penny that I ever heard of. On the contrary, passengers themselves must pay. And there is all the difference in the world between paying and being paid. The act of paying is perhaps the most uncomfortable infliction that the two orchard thieves entailed upon us. But being paid,--what will compare with it? The urbane activity with which a man receives money is really marvellous, considering that we so earnestly believe money to be the root of all earthly ills, and that on no account can a monied man enter heaven. Ah! how cheerfully we consign ourselves to perdition!

Finally, I always go to sea as a sailor, because of the wholesome exercise and pure air of the forecastle deck. For as in this world, head winds are far more prevalent than winds from astern (that is, if you never violate the Pythagorean maxim), so for the most part the Commodore on the quarter-deck gets his atmosphere at second hand from the sailors on the forecastle. He thinks he breathes it first; but not so. In much the same way do the commonalty lead their leaders in many other things, at the same time that the leaders little suspect it. But wherefore it was that after having repeatedly smelt the sea as a merchant sailor, I should now take it into my head to go on a whaling voyage; this the invisible police officer of the Fates, who has the constant surveillance of me, and secretly dogs me, and influences me in some unaccountable way--he can better answer than any one else. And, doubtless, my going on this whaling voyage, formed part of the grand programme of Providence that was drawn up a long time ago. It came in as a sort of brief interlude and solo between more extensive performances. I take it that this part of the bill must have run something like this:



"grand contested election for the presidency of the united states.

"whaling voyage by one ishmael.

"bloody battle in afghanistan."



Though I cannot tell why it was exactly that those stage managers, the Fates, put me down for this shabby part of a whaling voyage, when others were set down for magnificent parts in high tragedies, and short and easy parts in genteel comedies, and jolly parts in farces--though I cannot tell why this was exactly; yet, now that I recall all the circumstances, I think I can see a little into the springs and motives which being cunningly presented to me under various disguises, induced me to set about performing the part I did, besides cajoling me into the delusion that it was a choice resulting from my own unbiased freewill and discriminating judgment.

Chief among these motives was the overwhelming idea of the great whale himself. Such a portentous and mysterious monster roused all my curiosity. Then the wild and distant seas where he rolled his island bulk; the undeliverable, nameless perils of the whale; these, with all the attending marvels of a thousand Patagonian sights and sounds, helped to sway me to my wish. With other men, perhaps, such things would not have been inducements; but as for me, I am tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas, and land on barbarous coasts. Not ignoring what is good, I am quick to perceive a horror, and could still be social with it--would they let me--since it is but well to be on friendly terms with all the inmates of the place one lodges in.

By reason of these things, then, the whaling voyage was welcome; the great flood-gates of the wonder-world swung open, and in the wild conceits that swayed me to my purpose, two and two there floated into my inmost soul, endless processions of the whale, and, mid most of them all, one grand hooded phantom, like a snow hill in the air.
Copyright © 1967 by Bantam Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

About

First published in 1851, Melville's masterpiece is, in Elizabeth Hardwick's words, "the greatest novel in American literature." The saga of Captain Ahab and his monomaniacal pursuit of the white whale remains a peerless adventure story but one full of mythic grandeur, poetic majesty, and symbolic power. Filtered through the consciousness of the novel's narrator, Ishmael, Moby-Dick draws us into a universe full of fascinating characters and stories, from the noble cannibal Queequeg to the natural history of whales, while reaching existential depths that excite debate and contemplation to this day.

This Modern Library Paperback Classics edition contains original illustrations by Rockwell Kent and commentary that includes excerpts from one of Melville's letters to Hawthorne.

Author

Herman Melville was born in New York City in 1819. When his father died, he was forced to leave school and find work. After passing through some minor clerical jobs, the eighteen-year-old young man shipped out to sea, first on a short cargo trip, then, at twenty-one, on a three-year South Sea whaling venture. From the experiences accumulated on this voyage would come the material for his early books, Typee (1846) and Omoo (1847), as well as for such masterpieces as Moby-Dick (1851), Pierre (1852), The Piazza Tales (1856), and Billy Budd, Sailor, and Other Stories (posthumous, 1924). Though the first two novels—popular romantic adventures—sold well, Melville's more serious writing failed to attract a large audience, perhaps because it attacked the current philosophy of transcendentalism and its espoused "self-reliance." (As he made clear in the savagely comic The Confidence Man (1857), Melville thought very little of Emersonian philosophy.) He spent his later years working as a customs inspector on the New York docks, writing only poems comprising Battle-Pieces (1866). He died in 1891, leaving Billy Budd, Sailor, and Other Stories unpublished. View titles by Herman Melville

Excerpt

CHAPTER 1



LOOMINGS



Call me Ishmael. Some years ago--never mind how long precisely--having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen, and regulating the circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off--then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball. With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the ship. There is nothing surprising in this. If they but knew it, almost all men in their degree, some time or other, cherish very nearly the same feelings towards the ocean with me.

There now is your insular city of the Manhattoes, belted round by wharves as Indian isles by coral reefs--commerce surrounds it with her surf. Right and left, the streets take you waterward. Its extreme down-town is the battery, where that noble mole is washed by waves, and cooled by breezes, which a few hours previous were out of sight of land. Look at the crowds of water-gazers there.

Circumambulate the city of a dreamy Sabbath afternoon. Go from Corlears Hook to Coenties Slip, and from thence, by Whitehall, northward. What do you see?--Posted like silent sentinels all around the town, stand thousands upon thousands of mortal men fixed in ocean reveries. Some leaning against the spiles; some seated upon the pier-heads; some looking over the bulwarks of ships from China; some high aloft in the rigging, as if striving to get a still better seaward peep. But these are all landsmen; of week days pent up in lath and plaster--tied to counters, nailed to benches, clinched to desks. How then is this? Are the green fields gone? What do they here?

But look! here come more crowds, pacing straight for the water, and seemingly bound for a dive. Strange! Nothing will content them but the extremest limit of the land; loitering under the shady lee of yonder warehouses will not suffice. No. They must get just as nigh the water as they possibly can without falling in. And there they stand--miles of them--leagues. Inlanders all, they come from lanes and alleys, streets and avenues--north, east, south, and west. Yet here they all unite. Tell me, does the magnetic virtue of the needles of the compasses of all those ships attract them thither?

Once more. Say, you are in the country; in some high land of lakes. Take almost any path you please, and ten to one it carries you down in a dale, and leaves you there by a pool in the stream. There is magic in it. Let the most absentminded of men be plunged in his deepest reveries--stand that man on his legs, set his feet a-going, and he will infallibly lead you to water, if water there be in all that region. Should you ever be athirst in the great American desert, try this experiment, if your caravan happen to be supplied with a metaphysical professor. Yes, as every one knows, meditation and water are wedded for ever.

But here is an artist. He desires to paint you the dreamiest, shadiest, quietest, most enchanting bit of romantic landscape in all the valley of the Saco. What is the chief element he employs? There stand his trees, each with a hollow trunk, as if a hermit and a crucifix were within; and here sleeps his meadow, and there sleep his cattle; and up from yonder cottage goes a sleepy smoke. Deep into distant woodlands winds a mazy way, reaching to overlapping spurs of mountains bathed in their hill-side blue. But though the picture lies thus tranced, and though this pine-tree shakes down its sighs like leaves upon this shepherd's head, yet all were vain, unless the shepherd's eye were fixed upon the magic stream before him. Go visit the Prairies in June, when for scores on scores of miles you wade knee-deep among Tiger-lilies--what is the one charm wanting?--Water--there is not a drop of water there! Were Niagara but a cataract of sand, would you travel your thousand miles to see it? Why did the poor poet of Tennessee, upon suddenly receiving two handfuls of silver, deliberate whether to buy him a coat, which he sadly needed, or invest his money in a pedestrian trip to Rockaway Beach? Why is almost every robust healthy boy with a robust healthy soul in him, at some time or other crazy to go to sea? Why upon your first voyage as a passenger, did you yourself feel such a mystical vibration, when first told that you and your ship were now out of sight of land? Why did the old Persians hold the sea holy? Why did the Greeks give it a separate deity, and own brother of Jove? Surely all this is not without meaning. And still deeper the meaning of that story of Narcissus, who because he could not grasp the tormenting, mild image he saw in the fountain, plunged into it and was drowned. But that same image, we ourselves see in all rivers and oceans. It is the image of the ungraspable phantom of life; and this is the key to it all.

Now, when I say that I am in the habit of going to sea whenever I begin to grow hazy about the eyes, and begin to be over conscious of my lungs, I do not mean to have it inferred that I ever go to sea as a passenger. For to go as a passenger you must needs have a purse, and a purse is but a rag unless you have something in it. Besides, passengers get sea-sick--grow quarrelsome--don't sleep of nights--do not enjoy themselves much, as a general thing;--no, I never go as a passenger; nor, though I am something of a salt, do I ever go to sea as a Commodore, or a Captain, or a Cook. I abandon the glory and distinction of such offices to those who like them. For my part, I abominate all honorable respectable toils, trials, and tribulations of every kind whatsoever. It is quite as much as I can do to take care of myself, without taking care of ships, barques, brigs, schooners, and what not. And as for going as cook,--though I confess there is considerable glory in that, a cook being a sort of officer on ship-board--yet, somehow, I never fancied broiling fowls;--though once broiled, judiciously buttered, and judgmatically salted and peppered, there is no one who will speak more respectfully, not to say reverentially, of a broiled fowl than I will. It is out of the idolatrous dotings of the old Egyptians upon broiled ibis and roasted river horse, that you see the mummies of those creatures in their huge bake-houses the pyramids.

No, when I go to sea, I go as a simple sailor, right before the mast, plumb down into the forecastle, aloft there to the royal mast-head. True, they rather order me about some, and make me jump from spar to spar, like a grasshopper in a May meadow. And at first, this sort of thing is unpleasant enough. It touches one's sense of honor, particularly if you come of an old established family in the land, the Van Rensselaers, or Randolphs, or Hardicanutes. And more than all, if just previous to putting your hand into the tar-pot, you have been lording it as a country schoolmaster, making the tallest boys stand in awe of you. The transition is a keen one, I assure you, from a schoolmaster to a sailor, and requires a strong decoction of Seneca and the Stoics to enable you to grin and bear it. But even this wears off in time.

What of it, if some old hunks of a sea-captain orders me to get a broom and sweep down the decks? What does that indignity amount to, weighed, I mean, in the scales of the New Testament? Do you think the archangel Gabriel thinks anything the less of me, because I promptly and respectfully obey that old hunks in that particular instance? Who ain't a slave? Tell me that. Well, then, however the old sea-captains may order me about--however they may thump and punch me about, I have the satisfaction of knowing that it is all right; that everybody else is one way or other served in much the same way--either in a physical or metaphysical point of view, that is; and so the universal thump is passed round, and all hands should rub each other's shoulder-blades, and be content.

Again, I always go to sea as a sailor, because they make a point of paying me for my trouble, whereas they never pay passengers a single penny that I ever heard of. On the contrary, passengers themselves must pay. And there is all the difference in the world between paying and being paid. The act of paying is perhaps the most uncomfortable infliction that the two orchard thieves entailed upon us. But being paid,--what will compare with it? The urbane activity with which a man receives money is really marvellous, considering that we so earnestly believe money to be the root of all earthly ills, and that on no account can a monied man enter heaven. Ah! how cheerfully we consign ourselves to perdition!

Finally, I always go to sea as a sailor, because of the wholesome exercise and pure air of the forecastle deck. For as in this world, head winds are far more prevalent than winds from astern (that is, if you never violate the Pythagorean maxim), so for the most part the Commodore on the quarter-deck gets his atmosphere at second hand from the sailors on the forecastle. He thinks he breathes it first; but not so. In much the same way do the commonalty lead their leaders in many other things, at the same time that the leaders little suspect it. But wherefore it was that after having repeatedly smelt the sea as a merchant sailor, I should now take it into my head to go on a whaling voyage; this the invisible police officer of the Fates, who has the constant surveillance of me, and secretly dogs me, and influences me in some unaccountable way--he can better answer than any one else. And, doubtless, my going on this whaling voyage, formed part of the grand programme of Providence that was drawn up a long time ago. It came in as a sort of brief interlude and solo between more extensive performances. I take it that this part of the bill must have run something like this:



"grand contested election for the presidency of the united states.

"whaling voyage by one ishmael.

"bloody battle in afghanistan."



Though I cannot tell why it was exactly that those stage managers, the Fates, put me down for this shabby part of a whaling voyage, when others were set down for magnificent parts in high tragedies, and short and easy parts in genteel comedies, and jolly parts in farces--though I cannot tell why this was exactly; yet, now that I recall all the circumstances, I think I can see a little into the springs and motives which being cunningly presented to me under various disguises, induced me to set about performing the part I did, besides cajoling me into the delusion that it was a choice resulting from my own unbiased freewill and discriminating judgment.

Chief among these motives was the overwhelming idea of the great whale himself. Such a portentous and mysterious monster roused all my curiosity. Then the wild and distant seas where he rolled his island bulk; the undeliverable, nameless perils of the whale; these, with all the attending marvels of a thousand Patagonian sights and sounds, helped to sway me to my wish. With other men, perhaps, such things would not have been inducements; but as for me, I am tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas, and land on barbarous coasts. Not ignoring what is good, I am quick to perceive a horror, and could still be social with it--would they let me--since it is but well to be on friendly terms with all the inmates of the place one lodges in.

By reason of these things, then, the whaling voyage was welcome; the great flood-gates of the wonder-world swung open, and in the wild conceits that swayed me to my purpose, two and two there floated into my inmost soul, endless processions of the whale, and, mid most of them all, one grand hooded phantom, like a snow hill in the air.
Copyright © 1967 by Bantam Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

Additional formats

  • Moby-Dick
    Moby-Dick
    Introduction by Larzer Ziff
    Herman Melville
    $32.00 US
    Hardcover
    Nov 26, 1991
  • Moby-Dick
    Moby-Dick
    Herman Melville
    $5.95 US
    Mass Market Paperback
    Feb 01, 1981
  • Moby-Dick
    Moby-Dick
    Introduction by Larzer Ziff
    Herman Melville
    $32.00 US
    Hardcover
    Nov 26, 1991
  • Moby-Dick
    Moby-Dick
    Herman Melville
    $5.95 US
    Mass Market Paperback
    Feb 01, 1981

Other books in this series

  • Wuthering Heights
    Wuthering Heights
    Emily Bronte
    $8.00 US
    Paperback
    Dec 07, 2021
  • Selected Stories of Guy de Maupassant
    Selected Stories of Guy de Maupassant
    Introduction by Catriona Seth
    Guy de Maupassant
    $22.00 US
    Hardcover
    Oct 05, 2021
  • The Babur Nama
    The Babur Nama
    Introduction by William Dalrymple
    Babur
    $30.00 US
    Hardcover
    Nov 03, 2020
  • Independent People
    Independent People
    Introduction by John Freeman
    Halldor Laxness
    $26.00 US
    Hardcover
    Oct 06, 2020
  • The Mayor of Casterbridge
    The Mayor of Casterbridge
    Thomas Hardy
    $11.00 US
    Paperback
    Nov 08, 2016
  • Reflections on the Revolution in France and Other Writings
    Reflections on the Revolution in France and Other Writings
    Edited and Introduced by Jesse Norman
    Edmund Burke
    $32.00 US
    Hardcover
    Nov 03, 2015
  • The Autobiography and Other Writings
    The Autobiography and Other Writings
    Introduction by Jill Lepore
    Benjamin Franklin
    $28.00 US
    Hardcover
    Sep 08, 2015
  • Walden & Civil Disobedience
    Walden & Civil Disobedience
    Henry David Thoreau
    $11.00 US
    Paperback
    Aug 26, 2014
  • The Scarlet Letter
    The Scarlet Letter
    A Romance
    Nathaniel Hawthorne
    $8.00 US
    Paperback
    Aug 26, 2014
  • Journey to the Center of the Earth, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, Round the World in Eighty Days
    Journey to the Center of the Earth, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, Round the World in Eighty Days
    Introduction by Tim Farrant
    Jules Verne
    $35.00 US
    Hardcover
    Oct 01, 2013
  • The Age of Innocence
    The Age of Innocence
    Edith Wharton
    $11.00 US
    Paperback
    Jun 05, 2012
  • The Custom of the Country
    The Custom of the Country
    Edith Wharton
    $12.00 US
    Paperback
    Jun 05, 2012
  • The Hunchback of Notre-Dame
    The Hunchback of Notre-Dame
    Introduction by Jean-Marc Hovasse
    Victor Hugo
    $26.00 US
    Hardcover
    Feb 07, 2012
  • The Time Machine, The Invisible Man, The War of the Worlds
    The Time Machine, The Invisible Man, The War of the Worlds
    Introduction by Margaret Drabble
    H. G. Wells
    $28.00 US
    Hardcover
    Aug 03, 2010
  • Annals and Histories
    Annals and Histories
    Introduction by Robin Lane Fox
    Tacitus
    $35.00 US
    Hardcover
    Oct 06, 2009
  • The Mystery of Edwin Drood
    The Mystery of Edwin Drood
    Charles Dickens
    $12.00 US
    Paperback
    Oct 06, 2009
  • The Count of Monte Cristo
    The Count of Monte Cristo
    Introduction by Umberto Eco
    Alexandre Dumas
    $30.00 US
    Hardcover
    Jun 02, 2009
  • Jane Eyre
    Jane Eyre
    Charlotte Bronte
    $9.00 US
    Paperback
    Apr 07, 2009
  • Villette
    Villette
    Charlotte Bronte
    $17.00 US
    Paperback
    Apr 07, 2009
  • The Travels of Marco Polo
    The Travels of Marco Polo
    Introduction by Colin Thubron
    Marco Polo
    $32.00 US
    Hardcover
    Oct 21, 2008
  • The Prince
    The Prince
    Niccolo Machiavelli
    $14.00 US
    Paperback
    Feb 05, 2008
  • Emma
    Emma
    Jane Austen
    $10.00 US
    Paperback
    Sep 04, 2007
  • Persuasion
    Persuasion
    Jane Austen
    $7.00 US
    Paperback
    Sep 04, 2007
  • Notes from Underground
    Notes from Underground
    Introduction by Richard Pevear
    Fyodor Dostoevsky
    $26.00 US
    Hardcover
    Mar 23, 2004
  • Kim
    Kim
    Rudyard Kipling
    $8.00 US
    Paperback
    Feb 10, 2004
  • The Origin of Species and The Voyage of the 'Beagle'
    The Origin of Species and The Voyage of the 'Beagle'
    Introduction by Richard Dawkins
    Charles Darwin
    $35.00 US
    Hardcover
    Oct 14, 2003
  • Our Mutual Friend
    Our Mutual Friend
    Charles Dickens
    $13.00 US
    Paperback
    Sep 10, 2002
  • Daniel Deronda
    Daniel Deronda
    George Eliot
    $11.00 US
    Paperback
    Jul 09, 2002
  • Moll Flanders
    Moll Flanders
    Daniel Defoe
    $14.00 US
    Paperback
    Jun 11, 2002
  • The Memoirs of Hector Berlioz
    The Memoirs of Hector Berlioz
    Introduced by David Cairns
    Hector Berlioz
    $35.00 US
    Hardcover
    Mar 19, 2002
  • Little Dorrit
    Little Dorrit
    Charles Dickens, H. K. Browne
    $13.00 US
    Paperback
    Mar 12, 2002
  • Far from the Madding Crowd
    Far from the Madding Crowd
    Thomas Hardy
    $11.00 US
    Paperback
    Dec 11, 2001
  • Oliver Twist
    Oliver Twist
    Charles Dickens, George Cruikshank
    $8.00 US
    Paperback
    Oct 09, 2001
  • Jude the Obscure
    Jude the Obscure
    Thomas Hardy
    $12.00 US
    Paperback
    Aug 14, 2001
  • Hard Times
    Hard Times
    Charles Dickens
    $10.00 US
    Paperback
    Jul 10, 2001
  • Silas Marner
    Silas Marner
    The Weaver of Raveloe
    George Eliot
    $9.00 US
    Paperback
    May 08, 2001
  • The Analects
    The Analects
    Introduction by Sarah Allan
    Confucius
    $22.00 US
    Hardcover
    May 01, 2001
  • Symposium and Phaedrus
    Symposium and Phaedrus
    Introduction by Richard Rutherford
    Plato
    $21.00 US
    Hardcover
    Mar 06, 2001
  • Tess of the d'Urbervilles
    Tess of the d'Urbervilles
    A Pure Woman
    Thomas Hardy
    $10.00 US
    Paperback
    Feb 13, 2001
  • Great Expectations
    Great Expectations
    Charles Dickens
    $11.00 US
    Paperback
    Feb 13, 2001
  • Uncle Tom's Cabin
    Uncle Tom's Cabin
    or, Life among the Lowly
    Harriet Beecher Stowe
    $10.00 US
    Paperback
    Jan 09, 2001
  • David Copperfield
    David Copperfield
    Charles Dickens
    $8.95 US
    Paperback
    Nov 28, 2000
  • Heart of Darkness
    Heart of Darkness
    and Selections from The Congo Diary
    Joseph Conrad
    $11.00 US
    Paperback
    Aug 10, 1999
  • Les Miserables
    Les Miserables
    Introduction by Peter Washington
    Victor Hugo
    $42.00 US
    Hardcover
    Mar 31, 1998
  • Romances
    Romances
    Introduction by Tony Tanner
    William Shakespeare
    $26.00 US
    Hardcover
    Apr 07, 1997
  • The Histories
    The Histories
    Introduction by Rosalind Thomas
    Herodotus
    $30.00 US
    Hardcover
    Mar 25, 1997
  • Histories, vol. 2
    Histories, vol. 2
    Volume 2; Introduction by Tony Tanner
    William Shakespeare
    $28.00 US
    Hardcover
    Nov 01, 1994
  • The Theban Plays
    The Theban Plays
    Introduction by Charles Segal
    Sophocles
    $22.00 US
    Hardcover
    Oct 18, 1994
  • Histories, vol. 1
    Histories, vol. 1
    Volume 1; Introduction by Tony Tanner
    William Shakespeare
    $28.00 US
    Hardcover
    Oct 04, 1994
  • Fear and Trembling and The Book on Adler
    Fear and Trembling and The Book on Adler
    Introduction by George Steiner
    Soren Kierkegaard
    $25.00 US
    Hardcover
    May 10, 1994
  • Democracy in America
    Democracy in America
    Introduction by Alan Ryan
    Alexis de Tocqueville
    $35.00 US
    Hardcover
    May 10, 1994
  • The Souls of Black Folk
    The Souls of Black Folk
    Introduction by Arnold Rampersad
    W. E. B. Du Bois
    $22.00 US
    Hardcover
    Oct 26, 1993
  • A Tale of Two Cities
    A Tale of Two Cities
    Introduction by Simon Schama
    Charles Dickens
    $30.00 US
    Hardcover
    Feb 23, 1993
  • The Sonnets and Narrative Poems of William Shakespeare
    The Sonnets and Narrative Poems of William Shakespeare
    Introduction by Helen Vendler
    William Shakespeare
    $21.00 US
    Hardcover
    Dec 15, 1992
  • The Awakening
    The Awakening
    Introduction by Elaine Showalter
    Kate Chopin
    $21.00 US
    Hardcover
    Nov 03, 1992
  • Canterbury Tales
    Canterbury Tales
    Introduction by Derek Pearsall
    Geoffrey Chaucer
    $28.00 US
    Hardcover
    Jun 30, 1992
  • The Aeneid
    The Aeneid
    Introduction by Philip Hardie
    Virgil
    $28.00 US
    Hardcover
    Jun 30, 1992
  • Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
    Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
    Introduction by Nicholas Rance
    Robert Louis Stevenson
    $20.00 US
    Hardcover
    Apr 28, 1992
  • Utopia
    Utopia
    Introduction by Jenny Mezciems
    Thomas More
    $20.00 US
    Hardcover
    Apr 28, 1992
  • The House of Mirth
    The House of Mirth
    Introduction by Pamela Knights
    Edith Wharton
    $26.00 US
    Hardcover
    Nov 26, 1991
  • Pride and Prejudice
    Pride and Prejudice
    Introduction by Peter Conrad
    Jane Austen
    $26.00 US
    Hardcover
    Oct 15, 1991
  • The Wealth of Nations
    The Wealth of Nations
    Introduction by D. D. Raphael and John Bayley
    Adam Smith
    $28.00 US
    Hardcover
    Oct 15, 1991
  • Bleak House
    Bleak House
    Introduction by Barbara Hardy
    Charles Dickens
    $32.00 US
    Hardcover
    Oct 15, 1991
  • Wuthering Heights
    Wuthering Heights
    Emily Bronte
    $8.00 US
    Paperback
    Dec 07, 2021
  • Selected Stories of Guy de Maupassant
    Selected Stories of Guy de Maupassant
    Introduction by Catriona Seth
    Guy de Maupassant
    $22.00 US
    Hardcover
    Oct 05, 2021
  • The Babur Nama
    The Babur Nama
    Introduction by William Dalrymple
    Babur
    $30.00 US
    Hardcover
    Nov 03, 2020
  • Independent People
    Independent People
    Introduction by John Freeman
    Halldor Laxness
    $26.00 US
    Hardcover
    Oct 06, 2020
  • The Mayor of Casterbridge
    The Mayor of Casterbridge
    Thomas Hardy
    $11.00 US
    Paperback
    Nov 08, 2016
  • Reflections on the Revolution in France and Other Writings
    Reflections on the Revolution in France and Other Writings
    Edited and Introduced by Jesse Norman
    Edmund Burke
    $32.00 US
    Hardcover
    Nov 03, 2015
  • The Autobiography and Other Writings
    The Autobiography and Other Writings
    Introduction by Jill Lepore
    Benjamin Franklin
    $28.00 US
    Hardcover
    Sep 08, 2015
  • Walden & Civil Disobedience
    Walden & Civil Disobedience
    Henry David Thoreau
    $11.00 US
    Paperback
    Aug 26, 2014
  • The Scarlet Letter
    The Scarlet Letter
    A Romance
    Nathaniel Hawthorne
    $8.00 US
    Paperback
    Aug 26, 2014
  • Journey to the Center of the Earth, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, Round the World in Eighty Days
    Journey to the Center of the Earth, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, Round the World in Eighty Days
    Introduction by Tim Farrant
    Jules Verne
    $35.00 US
    Hardcover
    Oct 01, 2013
  • The Age of Innocence
    The Age of Innocence
    Edith Wharton
    $11.00 US
    Paperback
    Jun 05, 2012
  • The Custom of the Country
    The Custom of the Country
    Edith Wharton
    $12.00 US
    Paperback
    Jun 05, 2012
  • The Hunchback of Notre-Dame
    The Hunchback of Notre-Dame
    Introduction by Jean-Marc Hovasse
    Victor Hugo
    $26.00 US
    Hardcover
    Feb 07, 2012
  • The Time Machine, The Invisible Man, The War of the Worlds
    The Time Machine, The Invisible Man, The War of the Worlds
    Introduction by Margaret Drabble
    H. G. Wells
    $28.00 US
    Hardcover
    Aug 03, 2010
  • Annals and Histories
    Annals and Histories
    Introduction by Robin Lane Fox
    Tacitus
    $35.00 US
    Hardcover
    Oct 06, 2009
  • The Mystery of Edwin Drood
    The Mystery of Edwin Drood
    Charles Dickens
    $12.00 US
    Paperback
    Oct 06, 2009
  • The Count of Monte Cristo
    The Count of Monte Cristo
    Introduction by Umberto Eco
    Alexandre Dumas
    $30.00 US
    Hardcover
    Jun 02, 2009
  • Jane Eyre
    Jane Eyre
    Charlotte Bronte
    $9.00 US
    Paperback
    Apr 07, 2009
  • Villette
    Villette
    Charlotte Bronte
    $17.00 US
    Paperback
    Apr 07, 2009
  • The Travels of Marco Polo
    The Travels of Marco Polo
    Introduction by Colin Thubron
    Marco Polo
    $32.00 US
    Hardcover
    Oct 21, 2008
  • The Prince
    The Prince
    Niccolo Machiavelli
    $14.00 US
    Paperback
    Feb 05, 2008
  • Emma
    Emma
    Jane Austen
    $10.00 US
    Paperback
    Sep 04, 2007
  • Persuasion
    Persuasion
    Jane Austen
    $7.00 US
    Paperback
    Sep 04, 2007
  • Notes from Underground
    Notes from Underground
    Introduction by Richard Pevear
    Fyodor Dostoevsky
    $26.00 US
    Hardcover
    Mar 23, 2004
  • Kim
    Kim
    Rudyard Kipling
    $8.00 US
    Paperback
    Feb 10, 2004
  • The Origin of Species and The Voyage of the 'Beagle'
    The Origin of Species and The Voyage of the 'Beagle'
    Introduction by Richard Dawkins
    Charles Darwin
    $35.00 US
    Hardcover
    Oct 14, 2003
  • Our Mutual Friend
    Our Mutual Friend
    Charles Dickens
    $13.00 US
    Paperback
    Sep 10, 2002
  • Daniel Deronda
    Daniel Deronda
    George Eliot
    $11.00 US
    Paperback
    Jul 09, 2002
  • Moll Flanders
    Moll Flanders
    Daniel Defoe
    $14.00 US
    Paperback
    Jun 11, 2002
  • The Memoirs of Hector Berlioz
    The Memoirs of Hector Berlioz
    Introduced by David Cairns
    Hector Berlioz
    $35.00 US
    Hardcover
    Mar 19, 2002
  • Little Dorrit
    Little Dorrit
    Charles Dickens, H. K. Browne
    $13.00 US
    Paperback
    Mar 12, 2002
  • Far from the Madding Crowd
    Far from the Madding Crowd
    Thomas Hardy
    $11.00 US
    Paperback
    Dec 11, 2001
  • Oliver Twist
    Oliver Twist
    Charles Dickens, George Cruikshank
    $8.00 US
    Paperback
    Oct 09, 2001
  • Jude the Obscure
    Jude the Obscure
    Thomas Hardy
    $12.00 US
    Paperback
    Aug 14, 2001
  • Hard Times
    Hard Times
    Charles Dickens
    $10.00 US
    Paperback
    Jul 10, 2001
  • Silas Marner
    Silas Marner
    The Weaver of Raveloe
    George Eliot
    $9.00 US
    Paperback
    May 08, 2001
  • The Analects
    The Analects
    Introduction by Sarah Allan
    Confucius
    $22.00 US
    Hardcover
    May 01, 2001
  • Symposium and Phaedrus
    Symposium and Phaedrus
    Introduction by Richard Rutherford
    Plato
    $21.00 US
    Hardcover
    Mar 06, 2001
  • Tess of the d'Urbervilles
    Tess of the d'Urbervilles
    A Pure Woman
    Thomas Hardy
    $10.00 US
    Paperback
    Feb 13, 2001
  • Great Expectations
    Great Expectations
    Charles Dickens
    $11.00 US
    Paperback
    Feb 13, 2001
  • Uncle Tom's Cabin
    Uncle Tom's Cabin
    or, Life among the Lowly
    Harriet Beecher Stowe
    $10.00 US
    Paperback
    Jan 09, 2001
  • David Copperfield
    David Copperfield
    Charles Dickens
    $8.95 US
    Paperback
    Nov 28, 2000
  • Heart of Darkness
    Heart of Darkness
    and Selections from The Congo Diary
    Joseph Conrad
    $11.00 US
    Paperback
    Aug 10, 1999
  • Les Miserables
    Les Miserables
    Introduction by Peter Washington
    Victor Hugo
    $42.00 US
    Hardcover
    Mar 31, 1998
  • Romances
    Romances
    Introduction by Tony Tanner
    William Shakespeare
    $26.00 US
    Hardcover
    Apr 07, 1997
  • The Histories
    The Histories
    Introduction by Rosalind Thomas
    Herodotus
    $30.00 US
    Hardcover
    Mar 25, 1997
  • Histories, vol. 2
    Histories, vol. 2
    Volume 2; Introduction by Tony Tanner
    William Shakespeare
    $28.00 US
    Hardcover
    Nov 01, 1994
  • The Theban Plays
    The Theban Plays
    Introduction by Charles Segal
    Sophocles
    $22.00 US
    Hardcover
    Oct 18, 1994
  • Histories, vol. 1
    Histories, vol. 1
    Volume 1; Introduction by Tony Tanner
    William Shakespeare
    $28.00 US
    Hardcover
    Oct 04, 1994
  • Fear and Trembling and The Book on Adler
    Fear and Trembling and The Book on Adler
    Introduction by George Steiner
    Soren Kierkegaard
    $25.00 US
    Hardcover
    May 10, 1994
  • Democracy in America
    Democracy in America
    Introduction by Alan Ryan
    Alexis de Tocqueville
    $35.00 US
    Hardcover
    May 10, 1994
  • The Souls of Black Folk
    The Souls of Black Folk
    Introduction by Arnold Rampersad
    W. E. B. Du Bois
    $22.00 US
    Hardcover
    Oct 26, 1993
  • A Tale of Two Cities
    A Tale of Two Cities
    Introduction by Simon Schama
    Charles Dickens
    $30.00 US
    Hardcover
    Feb 23, 1993
  • The Sonnets and Narrative Poems of William Shakespeare
    The Sonnets and Narrative Poems of William Shakespeare
    Introduction by Helen Vendler
    William Shakespeare
    $21.00 US
    Hardcover
    Dec 15, 1992
  • The Awakening
    The Awakening
    Introduction by Elaine Showalter
    Kate Chopin
    $21.00 US
    Hardcover
    Nov 03, 1992
  • Canterbury Tales
    Canterbury Tales
    Introduction by Derek Pearsall
    Geoffrey Chaucer
    $28.00 US
    Hardcover
    Jun 30, 1992
  • The Aeneid
    The Aeneid
    Introduction by Philip Hardie
    Virgil
    $28.00 US
    Hardcover
    Jun 30, 1992
  • Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
    Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
    Introduction by Nicholas Rance
    Robert Louis Stevenson
    $20.00 US
    Hardcover
    Apr 28, 1992
  • Utopia
    Utopia
    Introduction by Jenny Mezciems
    Thomas More
    $20.00 US
    Hardcover
    Apr 28, 1992
  • The House of Mirth
    The House of Mirth
    Introduction by Pamela Knights
    Edith Wharton
    $26.00 US
    Hardcover
    Nov 26, 1991
  • Pride and Prejudice
    Pride and Prejudice
    Introduction by Peter Conrad
    Jane Austen
    $26.00 US
    Hardcover
    Oct 15, 1991
  • The Wealth of Nations
    The Wealth of Nations
    Introduction by D. D. Raphael and John Bayley
    Adam Smith
    $28.00 US
    Hardcover
    Oct 15, 1991
  • Bleak House
    Bleak House
    Introduction by Barbara Hardy
    Charles Dickens
    $32.00 US
    Hardcover
    Oct 15, 1991

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