MELVILLE, Herman (1819-1891). Mardi: and a Voyage Thither. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1849.

2 volumes, 8vo. (Spotting in vol. I, p. 365 supplied in facsimile in vol. I.) Original green blind-stamped cloth, gilt-lettered on spine, yellow coated endpapers (some refurbishing to cloth on vol. I, gilt-lettering also touched up, some rubbing to extremities). Provenance: G.E. Stocking (ownership signature dated 1852); James Albert Garland (armorial bookplate).

FIRST AMERICAN EDITION, published approximately one month after the English edition. "Mardi was originally intended as a factual South Seas adventure story...inspired by the many attacks upon the veracity of Typee and Omoo. As the story progressed, however, he began to slide increasingly into satire and metaphysical speculation... The resulting book revealed the first blossoming of the intellectual growth and spiritual searching that would shape Melville's later works" (Life and Works of Herman Melville). The present copy does not have the blind-stamped rule at the tops of the spines (no priority established). BAL 13658.