Herman Melville's Moby-Dick was first published

On October 18, 1851, the London publisher Richard Bentley released Herman Melville’s sixth novel — but not under the title we know. It appeared as The Whale, in 500 three-volume sets bound in sea-blue cloth. Melville’s request to rename it Moby-Dick and dedicate it to Nathaniel Hawthorne arrived too late to fix the title, though the dedication made it in.

The American edition, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, followed from Harper & Brothers on November 14, 1851. To Melville’s dismay, the British version omitted the Epilogue, leaving readers to wonder how narrator Ishmael survived.

Hawthorne marveled, “What a book Melville has written!” — but most critics did not.

Reviews ranged from puzzled to dismissive, and sales were grim: three years on, the first American printing of 2,915 copies still hadn’t sold out. Only in the twentieth century did the novel rise to its place among the great American books.