SIGNED Moby Dick FIRST EDITION + DJ Herman MELVILLE / Rockwell KENT 1930

Octavo, full bound black cloth boards with silver gilt title and illustration to front panel and spine. First Edition (thus), First Printing of Herman Melville's classic tale beautifully illustrated by Rockwell Kent and presenting in its exceptionally rare and notoriously fragile Original Dust Jacket. One of the most famous illustrated books of the 20th century and a towering example of Kent's art.

Inscribed and signed by the author on the front endpaper, To Scott Cunningham, by Rockwell Kent. An exceptionally well-preserved autographed example with superior shelf appeal. Initially spurned by critics and readers when published in 1851, "in the 20th century Moby Dick would be rediscovered and acknowledged as possibly the greatest of all American novels" (Chronology of American Literature). Kent did more than provide the illustrations for this landmark edition-he designed the entire book.

"His energy, many-sided activities and preoccupation with integrated book design made him one of the best known American illustrators of his time" (Harthan, 247). Includes 272 of the 280 illustrations in the three-volume, Lakeside Press limited edition that preceded it the same year. Vanity Fair quipped,'Of 1930 the literary event, Was the Random House edition of Moby Kent! Original full-bound cloth boards present clean and unmarked with gilt-stamped illustration to front fully retained.

Mo remarkable wear to edges or corners. A tiny amount of loss of illustration to spine.

Light wear to head of spine with a very small bit of fraying. Light rub to bottom near fore-edge and a few faint scratches to top.

Internally clean and unmarked but for two personal library plates affixed to front pastedown, name/date neatly penned to bottom fore-edge corner of front endpaper, and small notes penciled to inside top corner of rear pastedown. Inscribed and Signed by the Illustrator on the front endpaper, To Scott Cunningham, by Rockwell Kent. Dust Jacket presents exceptionally well.

Very light chipping to corners and head of spine with a tiny amount of loss. Mild wear to hinges and creases. Single dot to rear flap. A few extremely light creases to rear top edge.

A classic work considered by many to be amongst the best, including The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow, All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren, American Pastoral by Philip Roth, An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser, Animal Farm by George Orwell, Appointment in Samarra by John O'Hara, Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret by Judy Blume, The Assistant by Bernard Malamud, At Swim-Two-Birds by Flann O'Brien, Atonement by Ian McEwan, Beloved by Toni Morrison, The Berlin Stories by Christopher Isherwood, The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler, The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood, Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy, Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh, The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder, Call It Sleep by Henry Roth, Catch-22 by Joseph Heller, The Catcher in the Rye by J.

Salinger, A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess, The Confessions of Nat Turner by William Styron, The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen, The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon, A Dance to the Music of Time by Anthony Powell, The Day of the Locust by Nathanael West, Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather, A Death in the Family by James Agee, The Death of the Heart by Elizabeth Bowen, Deliverance by James Dickey, Dog Soldiers by Robert Stone, Falconer by John Cheever, The French Lieutenant's Woman by John Fowles, The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing, Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin, Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell, The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck, Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon, and The Great Gatsby by F. Others include titles such as, A Handful of Dust by Evelyn Waugh, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers, The Heart of the Matter by Graham Greene, Herzog by Saul Bellow, Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson, A House for Mr.

Naipaul, I, Claudius by Robert Graves, Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace, Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison, Light in August by William Faulkner, The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe by C. Lewis, Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov, Lord of the Flies by William Golding, The Lord of the Rings by J. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf, Naked Lunch by William Burroughs, Native Son by Richard Wright, Neuromancer by William Gibson, Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro, Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984) by George Orwell, On the Road by Jack Kerouac, and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey.

Even further, those recognize as the best of the best include The Painted Bird by Jerzy Kosinski, Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov, A Passage to India by E. Forster, Play It as It Lays by Joan Didion, Portnoy's Complaint by Philip Roth, Possession by A. Byatt, The Power and the Glory by Graham Green, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark, Rabbit, Run by John Updike, Ragtime by E. Doctorow, The Recognitions by William Gaddis, Red Harvest by Dashiell Hammett, Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates, The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles, Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson, The Sot-Weed Factor by John Barth, The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner, The Sportswriter by Richard Ford, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold by John le Carré, The Sun Also Rises, For Whom the Bell Tolls and Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway, Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf, Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller, Ubik by Philip K. Dick, Under the Net by Iris Murdoch, Under the Volcano by Malcolm Lowry, Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, White Noise by Don DeLillo, White Teeth by Zadie Smith, and Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys.

This item is in the category "Books & Magazines\Antiquarian & Collectible". The seller is "twobeesrarebooks" and is located in this country: US.

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• Year Printed: 1930
• Modified Item: Yes
• Country/Region of Manufacture: United States
• Topic: Literature, Modern
• Binding: Hardcover
• Region: North America
• Country of Manufacture: United States
• Illustrator: Rockwell Kent
• Printing Year: 1930
• Author: Herman Melville
• Subject: Literature & Fiction
• Original/Facsimile: Original
• Modification Description: Signed and Inscribed on the front endpaper, \
• Language: English
• Signed: Yes
• Publisher: Random House
• Place of Publication: New York
• Special Attributes: 1st Edition Thus, Rockwell Kent Illustrated, First Edition, 1st Printing, First Printing, Original Dust Jacket, First Impression Dust Jacket, Matching Dust Jacket, Original DJ, Signed, 1st Edition, Dust Jacket, Illustrated, Inscribed