Herman Melville - Moby-Dick (Penguin Classics) (pdf)

Herman Melville (Harold Beaver, ed.) - Moby-Dick (Penguin Classics, 1972). 1015 pages + plates.

New scan. Searchable pdf (clearscan) with contents in bookmarks, accurate metadata and pagination, etc.


There are many versions of Moby-Dick around, including several on tpb. This one is unique because of the extra study materials it includes. The book is roughly 60% original text and 40% "extras," including a roughly 300-page running commentary by the editor, Harold Beaver.

Penguin has allowed this edition to go out of print, perhaps because they believed it was just too much for its main audience of undergraduate students. The new Penguin Classics edition has a wealth of background information (and uses a more up-do-date critical text), but nothing to match this older edition. It deserves not to be forgotten.

This pdf has a detailed set of bookmarks to make navigation between text and commentary easier, but I suggest that if you decide to use the commentary while reading, make two copies of the file and open them side by side (or in separate devices): one open to the text and one open to the corresponding commentary.