Three phantom pirates by Peterson

In 1865 Philadelphia publisher T. B. Peterson reprinted Melville's historical romance of Israel Potter (1854-5) under a different title, The Refugee. Melville complained more than once about the unauthorized publication of his work. The author of Israel Potter formally and finally disavowed The Refugee in a letter to the editor of the New York World, published there on January 28, 1876. Zachary Turpin first located Melville's epistolary "Protest," as discussed in Turpin's March 2017 Leviathan article, Melville's Letter to the World.

Turpin cites relevant lists of Peterson titles including The Refugee that appeared in 1876 editions of novels by E.D.E.N. Southworth. Years before, in back of the 1857 edition of Southworth's Vivia; or, The Secret of Power, T. B. Peterson & Brothers advertised a forthcoming edition of Israel Potter with a different title: Fifty Years in Exile.



Similarly converting Melville's original subtitles to main titles, Peterson also promoted cheap editions of The Confidence-Man as "The Masquerade" and The Encantadas (recently collected in The Piazza Tales) as "The Enchanted Isles." All three apparently unauthorized titles were listed among "Works in Press by the Best Authors" in Peterson's edition of Vivia (Philadelphia, 1857) by Emma D. E. N. Southworth. None of these titles was actually published in 1857 or any other year, so far as I can tell.

Fifty years in Exile. 

By Herman Melville, author of "Omoo," "Typee," etc. Complete in two volumes, paper cover, price $1.00; or in one volume, cloth, $1.25. 

The Masquerade. 

By Herman Melville, author "Typee," "Omoo," etc. Complete in two volumes, paper cover. Price $1.00; or in one vol., cloth, for $1.25.  

The Enchanted Isles.

By Herman Melville, author of "Omoo," “Typee," etc. Complete in two volumes, paper cover. Price $1.00; or in one vol., cloth, for $1.25

https://books.google.com/books?id=xK8edm7GYA4C&pg=PT12&dq#v=onepage&q&f=false

These phantom editions of works by Herman Melville are NOT listed with advertised titles in the first edition Vivia in the E.D.E.N. Southworth Collection at the University of South Carolina.

Coincidentally, the "author-hero" that Melville's author-hero Pierre writes about in the 1852 novel Pierre or The Ambiguities is also named Vivia.