Moby-Dick in Kurtz's Lutheran Observer

Lutheran Observer and Weekly Religious Visiter - November 28, 1851
via GenealogyBank

NEW PUBLICATIONS. 

MOBY DICK, OR THE WHALE, by Herman Melville, author of "Typee," "Omoo," &c. New York, published by Harper & Brothers; Baltimore, sold by Cushings & Bailey, 262 Baltimore street, opposite Hanover street.

This new work, by the author of "Typee," takes us back to the scenes where that wondrous and wonderful narrative had its origin, and makes us the companions of whales, those monsters of the deep, whose history is here dressed in all the enchantment of romance, and all the power of reality. The voyage of the writer from New Bedford to the whaling ground--if one may so call the waters in which the fishes live and have their sports--is full of events, interesting, instructive, and pleasant to read. We reach the Pacific, where the whales revel, and there we see how they live, how they are captured, and how they are 'boiled down' and made food for fire. It is a pleasant, agreeable, instructive, amusing work, and right glad will the reader be to take the voyage, in his "mind's eye," over which it carries him.  --Lutheran Observer and Weekly Religious Visiter (Baltimore, MD) November 28, 1851; found in online Newspaper Archives at genealogybank.com.

The Lutheran Observer was edited by Benjamin Kurtz (1795-1865) and published weekly in Baltimore, Maryland. The favorable notice of Moby-Dick may have been copied from another newspaper. In the Lutheran Observer for April 12, 1850 Kurtz reprinted the notice of Melville's White-Jacket that had appeared in New York Evangelist on March 28, 1850. The Evangelist notice of White-Jacket is transcribed in Herman Melville: The Contemporary Reviews, ed. Brian Higgins and Hershel Parker (Cambridge University Press, 1995; paperback 2009) on page 318.

Notice of Melville's White-Jacket via GenealogyBank
Lutheran Observer (Baltimore, MD) April 12, 1850

Notice of Melville's White-Jacket via GenealogyBank
Lutheran Observer (Baltimore, MD) April 12, 1850

On August 14, 1852 Kurtz's Lutheran Observer reprinted the positive notice of Pierre in the Batimore Sun (August 4, 1852). The Baltimore Sun notice of Pierre is logged and transcribed in George Monteiro, Herman Melville: Fugitive References (1845-1922), Resources for American Literary Study Volume 33 (2008; AMS Press, 2010) pages 19-93 at 28.

Sat, Dec 30, 1865 – 1 · The Baltimore Sun (Baltimore, Maryland) · Newspapers.com