The Piazza Tales. (The Works Of Herman Melville, Standard Edition: Volume X) Herman Melville

Top edge gilt. Spine very slightly darkened, corners of last four leaves slightly creased. [Edition limited to 750 copies] - the 10th volume in Constable's handsome 16-volume collected edition that, following Raymond M. Weaver's ground-breaking biography, Herman Melville: mariner and mystic (1921), revived a literary reputation that had stalled with Melville's death aged 72 in 1891. The set was published in three batches - volumes i-viii in 1922, ix-xii in 1923, xiii-xvi in 1924; volume xiii constituted the first publication of Billy Budd, the manuscript of which Weaver had found among Melville's papers. The Piazza Tales was first published in America, by Dix & Edwards in 1856; Sampson Low's edition appeared in England a month later.