Moby-Dick Reviews Archive
Browse all 125 known contemporary reviews of Moby-Dick from 1851–1852, plus key revival-era criticism. The most complete collection online.
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Buffalo (NY) Commercial Advertiser
mixed
“This is an extraordinary book, neither good, nor wholly bad — 'o’er bad for blessing, and o’er good for banning.'... In the delineation of character, he utterly fails. There is not a being of this earth in the book before us.
”
— December 3, 1851
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Louisville (KY) Daily Journal
mixed
“A strange, wild book, in which there are many features of extraordinary interest and many others that might have been profitably omitted.
”
— December 13, 1851
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Charleston (SC) Southern Christian Advocate
mixed
“By turns picturesque, poetical, sportive, and stern in the iron grip of deep reflection.
”
— December 12, 1851
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Holden's Dollar Magazine
mixed
“Combined the two Literary World notices (the approving first notice and the hostile second notice by the Duyckincks) into one long review.
”
— December 1851
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Boston Post
hostile
“Not worth the money asked.
”
— November 20, 1851 (opens quoting the negative London Athenaeum review)
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New York Independent
hostile
“Judgment day will hold him liable.
”
— November 20, 1851
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NY Commercial Advertiser
hostile
“There are few readers who will not be at first repulsed by its eccentricity. We regret to see that Mr. Melville is guilty of sneering at the truths of revealed religion.
”
— November 28, 1851
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New York Literary World
hostile
“We do not like to see what, under any view, must be to the world the most sacred associations of life violated and defaced.
”
— Evert and George Duyckinck, November 22, 1851
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Parker's Journal
hostile
“Even his power of expression, and elegance of style, will not redeem a book from being prosy after the natural interest of its subject has been exhausted. More than five acts of the best tragedy would be too much for mere mortals to bear.
”
— November 22, 1851
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Boston Saturday Evening Gazette
hostile
“We have read portions of Moby Dick, but fail to discover any marks of freshness, any traces of originality.
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— William Warden Clapp, Jr., December 6, 1851
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New York Churchman
hostile
“Pitiable to see so much talent perverted to sneers at revealed religion and the burlesquing of sacred passages of Holy Writ.
”
— December 6, 1851
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Richmond (VA) Watchman and Observer
hostile
“This is one of Melville's wild books about the sea, presenting the same mad mixture of good and bad, genius and guiltiness... the perusal of it will give no one any knowledge or amusement which he cannot have with less risk from other works.
”
— Rev. Benjamin Gildersleeve, December 11, 1851
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- ✅ Complete, unabridged text — every word of the original 1851 edition
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- ✅ Historical context — the Essex disaster, Nantucket whaling, Melville's life
- ✅ Literary analysis — chapter-by-chapter commentary on themes and symbols
- ✅ Victorian vocabulary — obsolete words and nautical terms defined inline
- ✅ Biblical & literary references — every allusion traced to its source