This edition of Moby-Dick, released in honor of the book's 150th anniversary, is the authoritative text of one of the world's great adventure stories. A crew of whalers sets out in pursuit of a fierce white whale. Their names ring through the canon of American literature: Ishmael, the narrator; Queenqueg, a South Seas harpooner; Starbuck, the sober and serious chief mate; and above all Captain Ahab, part Faust and part Job, leading them to the ends of the earth -- and the destiny he will share with his foe.In Moby-Dick, Herman Melville set out to write "a mighty book" on "a mighty theme". As the book, his sixth, neared completion he wrote to Nathaniel Hawthorne about the dilemma he found himself caught in: "What I feel most moved to write, that is banned -- it will not pay. Yet, altogether, write the other way I cannot. So the product is a final hash, and all my books are botches".Contemporary British and American reviewers of Moby-Dick recognized qualities of greatness in the novel and genius in the author but they also complained about anomalies in its genre, plot, characters, language, and thought. By the time of the Melville revival of the 1920s, however, such criticisms had faded from view. Moby-Dick is acclaimed as the mighty book its author envisioned.This text of Moby-Dick is an Approved Text of the Center for Scholarly Editions (Modern Language Association of America).