Description: Here is a two volume book set that documents the life of Herman Melville….who’s masterpiece was of course Moby dick….and Melville himself had spent time on a Whaling boat. Author Jay Leyda spent several years documenting the minute details to reconstruct the daily life of Herman Melville. I have no idea how he accomplished this by 1951 w/ no computers or internet. It was a labor of love for Leyda.Many here may recognize Jay Leyda as a couple years after publishing his first Melville Log edition in 1951, he started work on his next “Bio-Diary”….this time Emily Dickinson…same format, two volumes and a detailed look at Emily’s daily life, family, friends and town. Leyda published ‘The Years and Hours of Emily Dickinson” in 1960.However, Leyda was still finding new material on Melville, and by the mid 1960’s he wanted to do a second printing with much new info.. Unfortunately Leyda’s health declined and he was not able to get as much as he wished…but he WAS able to get this SECOND Edition 1969 out: “THE MELVILLE LOG: A DOCUMENTARY LIFE OF HERMAN MELVILLE 1819-1891. It is published by The Gordian Press New York. Volume #1 still 494 pages. Volume #2 is now expanded to 966 pages with new material from the 1951 edition. I include a few index cards with typing on them…it appears that these copies came from someone who was associated with Leyda in organizing his updated Melville Log edition.The books are in fin condition….NO markings, NO Ex-library messes….corners sharp, pages sharp, corners sharp…no page loose…binding is slightly shaken, but not an issue. The lettering on the spine is in gold and sharp as new..If you know what Leyda’s other book The Years and Hours of Emily Dickinson, you know what to expect…it is why I have the Melville set, but this happens to be a spare copy I do not need.This updated Gordian Press 1969 is more scarce than the first printing of The Melville Log.,,and this 1969 often runs $300 or so for good copies.I will offer this 1969 set for just $175 ,plus $5.38 Media Mail (it will cost more to send but I will pay).I only sell this set as I do not need two. OH! The 1951 edition was with a slipcase. The 1969 edition did not.Here is more info I found about Melville Log: “The Melville Log, however, remains — to my knowledge — the sole example of the DIY approach to biography. “In the making of this book,” Jay Leyda wrote in his introduction, “I have tried to hold to one main aim: to give each reader the opportunity to be his own biographer of Herman Melville, by providing him with the largest possible quantity of materials to build his own approach to this complex figure.” The only way he could do this, he continued,… was to put together everything that could be known about this life, to bring the reader close to Melville’s progress through as many of his days as could be restored, so that the reader may watch him as he works, sees, reacts, worries — to make those seventy-two years, from 1819 to 1891, and a portion of the America they were lived in, in Henry James’s word, visitable. This approach forbade an emphasis on any part of his life to the exclusion of any other part, and forbade the neglect of material that seemed, in itself, of small importance. I trust the reader will find enjoyment in traveling alongside Melville — through good days and bad days, through great aims and trivial duties — as his body and mind grow and change — in a constant present, accumulating past experiences, but without knowing a future. Leyda knew that even The Melville Log was itself only a fragment. Letters to and from Melville and other pertinent documents would, and did, emerge after its publication. In the mid 1960s, he took on the task of updating the Log to incorporate material revealed in the subsequent nearly twenty years, aided by Herschel Parker, and a new edition was published in 1969 by the Gordian Press with a supplemental chapter. The Melville Log: A Documentary Life of Herman Melville, 1819-1891, by Jay Leda New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1951 New York: The Gordian Press, 1969In two volumes of nearly a thousand pages in total, The Melville Log may be the longest biography never written. Seventy years after its first publication, it’s still one of the most innovative takes on biography and a woefully under-recognized attempt to revitalize a form remarkably resistant to experimentation.
Price: 175 USD
Location: Scottsdale, Arizona
End Time: 2024-10-01T21:29:57.000Z
Shipping Cost: 5.38 USD
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