All about whales, exceedingly readable

To start with, here's another favorable notice of Moby-Dick, not previously transcribed or collected in Herman Melville: The Contemporary Reviews, edited by Brian Higgins and Hershel Parker (Cambridge University Press, 1995; paperback 2009). This item is not listed in Kevin J. Hayes and Hershel Parker, Checklist of Melville Reviews (Northwestern University Press, 1991); revised from the 1975 Checklist by Steven Mailloux and Hershel Parker. 

From the Rochester Daily American of November 20, 1851; found on Genealogy Bank:

Rochester NY Daily American - November 20, 1851

LOCAL INTELLIGENCE.
Books at Alling's.

MOBY DICK; OR THE WHALE. By HERMAN MELVILLE, author of Typee, Omoo, Redburn, Mardi, White Jacket, &c., Harper and Brothers.

This is a book all about whales. It gives descriptions of the Leviathan of the deep, the mode of catching them, and the life of those who go down in ships from New Bedford to the South seas, whale hunting. The reading public will find "Moby Dick" one of the pleasantest volumes issued from the press this year. For sale by Wm. Alling. 

--Rochester, New York Daily American, Thursday, November 20, 1851.

The Rochester Daily American was then owned and edited by Alexander Mann and Daniel Lee. I'm adding their brief notice of Moby-Dick on November 20, 1851 to the Melvilliana census

• Moby-Dick widely praised in 1851-2

surely the completest list you will find of contemporary reviews of Moby-Dick, or The Whale. 

On the following day, Friday, November 21, 1851, the Daily American reprinted all of chapter 85, The Fountain under the heading, "The Whale's Fountain." This Fountain "extract" from Moby-Dick was commended in another column as "exceedingly readable": 

MOBY DICK.— An exceedingly readable extract from this new work of HERMAN MELVILLE, (noticed by us yesterday,) will be found in another Part of this paper.  --Rochester NY Daily American, November 21, 1851.

The same extract from chapter 85 of Moby-Dick had previously appeared in the Troy Daily Whig (November 15, 1851) and other New York periodicals. As in the Troy reprinting, the first paragraph features an intriguing variant in the month that Ishmael gives when supposedly identifying the precise time and date of his writing: both newspaper versions make it "October" 16, 1851 where the first American edition has "December." 

From Herman Melville's New Work— "Mobey Dick".

The Whale's Fountain.

That for six thousand years—and no one knows how many millions of ages before—the great whales should have been spouting all over the sea, and sprinkling and mistifying the gardens of the deep, as with so many sprinkling or mistifying pots; and that for some centuries back, thousands of hunters should have been close by the fountain of the whale, watching these sprinklings and spoutings—that all this should be, and yet, that down to this blessed minute (fifteen and a quarter minutes past one o'clock P. M., of this sixteenth day of October, A. D., 1851,) it should still remain a problem, whether these spoutings are, after all, really water, or nothing but vapor—this is surely a noteworthy thing....  --Rochester NY Daily American, November 21, 1851.

 
19 Dec 1860, Wed The Brooklyn Daily Eagle (Brooklyn, New York) Newspapers.com
Related posts:

• Whale's Fountain in Troy Daily Whig
https://melvilliana.blogspot.com/2019/11/whales-fountain-in-troy-daily-whig.html

• Moby-Dick widely praised in 1851-2
  https://melvilliana.blogspot.com/2020/02/moby-dick-widely-praised-in-1851-2.html