This Day in History: 1851-10-18

Moby Dick is first published in London on this day in 1851. Herman Melville’s tale of an obsessive whaling captain who leads his crew to ruin was loosely based on the wreck of the whaleship Essex thirty-one years earlier. The book has become a classic in the canon of American literature. As a metaphor for the dawning ethic of nature, echoed also in H.D. Thoreau’s Walden (published three years later) the novel depicts the fight between humanity’s domineering impulse and nature’s resilience as one that neither side can win. Great quote: “Whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul … I account it high time to get to sea…”