The three-volume set, with deep blue cloth sides and white cloth spines stamped in gold (each spine dominated by a whale moving downward, though the whales are right whales, not sperm whales like Moby Dick), is one of the handsomest--and now one of the most sought-after--of all Victorian "three-deckers." John Carter, in More Binding Variants (London, 1938), called it "the most stunning and successful piece of bravura treatment on any mid-century three-decker of my experience" (p. 24). Only 500 copies of the sheets were printed, and probably fewer than 200 were bound in this fashion ...

HM 9

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