Here you go, the perfect stocking-stuffer for that eccentric and hard-to-please Melville obsessive on your Christmas shopping list. A guest pass signed by Herman Melville is offered in Sotheby's upcoming auction of Fine Books & Manuscripts.
Catalogue Note
This pass was presumably issued for a lecture Melville delivered to the Mechanic Apprentices’ Library Association in Boston in 1859, this being the only lecture he is known to have given on the last day of January. Titled "The South Seas," it explored the author's experiences there, which had served as the inspiration for his first two books, Typee and Omoo.
This item was already known from catalogues of previous auctions. A transcription appears on page 333 in the 1993 Northwestern-Newberry edition of Melville's Correspondence, edited by Lynn Horth.
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