The New Bedford Whaling Museum's Moby-Dick Marathon is an annual non-stop reading of Herman Melville's literary masterpiece. The multi-day program of entertaining activities and events is presented every January. Admission to the Marathon is free.

Monday, February 7, 2011

Today in History

From The New York Times, on this day in 1932:

SOURCE FOR 'MOBY DICK' TO BE SOLD AT AUCTION; Book Used by Melville Telling of Whale's Attack on Ship Goes on Block Tuesday.

Not having read the full article ($), one assumes this book to be Narrative of the Most Extraordinary and Distressing Shipwreck of the Whale-Ship Essex, by Owen Chase. How much did it go for? And where is it now?
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4 comments:

  1. Iron-bound BucketFebruary 7, 2011 at 12:50 PM

    Here's an article that mentions the sale of the Essex book ($1675 was the price paid):
    http://bit.ly/hwUp2Y

    ReplyDelete
  2. LemuelFebruary 7, 2011 at 6:55 PM

    Ah, I see from IBB's link that they were auctioning the copy that Melville actually owned. That makes quite a difference.

    $1675 in 1932 supposedly had the purchasing power of $26,300 in 2009, according to the calculator at How Much Is That in Real Money.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Iron-bound BucketFebruary 7, 2011 at 11:03 PM

    And you know who gave Chase's Narrative to Melville?
    http://bit.ly/hU6oom

    ReplyDelete
  4. LemuelFebruary 8, 2011 at 9:16 AM

    And you know who gave Chase's Narrative to Melville?

    But of course! How could I forget?

    (You're a clever one, IBB.)

    ReplyDelete

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