Mardi: And A Voyage Thither. (The Works Of Herman Melville, Standard Edition: Volume Ii, Volume Iii) Herman Melville

2 vols. Top edges gilt. Spine very slightly faded, first and last pages of vol. ii slightly spotted. [Edition limited to 750 copies] - the second and third 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; these with the bookplates of Nicholas Frederic Brady. 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. Rejected by Murray, Mardi was first published by Richard Bentley in 1849. Nicholas Frederic Brady (1878-1930) was a Catholic philanthropist and businessman based in New York; his elaborate engraved bookplate shows a panelled bookroom giving on to the sea - a sailing boat framed in its window.