Clarel: A Poem And Pilgrimage In The Holy Land. (The Works Of Herman Melville, Standard Edition: Volume Xiv, Volume Xv) Herman Melville

2 vols. Top edges gilt. Spines very slightly darkened and very faintly rubbed at head, first and last pages slightly spotted. [Edition limited to 750 copies] - the 14th and 15th volumes 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; loosely inserted in vol. xiv an invoice from J. Thornton & Son, Oxford, to Lord David Cecil, Wadham College, 27 January 1928, for Billy Budd (vol. xiii), Clarel (vols xiv-xv), and Poems (vol. xvi), £3 10s. 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. "CLAREL was first published in 1876 (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons). No English edition was ever issued."