The Great White Whale

On November 14, 1851 — Moby-Dick, a novel by Herman Melville — was published in the United States of America. The book was first published in three volumes as The Whale in London in October, and under its definitive title, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, in a single-volume edition in New York in mid-November. The London publisher, Richard Bentley, censored or changed sensitive passages; Melville made revisions as well, including a last-minute change of the title for the New York edition. The whale itself appears in the text of both editions as “Moby Dick,” without the hyphen.