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| B. P. Shillaber NYPL Digital Collections |
Unlike SLC aka Mark Twain, Melville presumably did not contribute anything to Shillaber's comic literary journal, keeping pretty busy in Pittsfield with farming and what-not. Speaking of which, the first volume of The Carpet-Bag ventured one fun and friendly and very early mention of Moby-Dick, referenced there by its original title The Whale.
Printed with other items of "LITERARY INTELLIGENCE," the last of three, in the Boston Carpet-Bag for October 18, 1851:
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| The Carpet-Bag:A Literary Journal - October 18, 1851 |
"The Whale" is the name of Mr. Melville's new work, and it is likely that the critics will harpoon, lance, and cut up the said fish."
All three items of humorous "Literary Intelligence" were reprinted in the Rochester NY Daily Democrat on Friday, October 24, 1851.
Google-digitized, the rare first volume of the Carpet-Bag is held by the University of Minnesota; images accessible online via Google Books
https://books.google.com/books?id=YYk3AQAAMAAJ&pg=PP239&lpg#v=onepage&q&f=false
and courtesy of HathiTrust Digital Library:
https://hdl.handle.net/2027/umn.31951000734920k?urlappend=%3Bseq=239%3Bownerid=13510798902438398-275
New York Evening Post - April 24, 1851
THE CARPET BAG is the title of a new weekly journal published in Boston, and which for the short period of its existence has given evidence of more than ordinary merit. One of its editors is Mr. Shillaber, whose Mrs. Partingtonisms have won for him an enviable fame as a humorist. His associate, Mr. S. W. Wilder, is a clever writer, and possesses a fine literary taste. The Carpet Bag is an amusing, cheering, and not uninstructive miscellany, and merits the patronage which will be sure to seek it out, as soon as its character becomes known. It is now five weeks old. "May it live forever." --New York Evening Post, April 24, 1851
For more info about Benjamin Shillaber and His Carpet Bag see
Clemens, Cyril. “Benjamin Shillaber and His ‘Carpet Bag.’” The New England Quarterly, vol. 14, no. 3, 1941, pp. 519–37. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/360490.
and the delightfully detailed treatment by Wayne C. Temple in Lincoln's Confidant: The Life of Noah Brooks, ed. Douglas L. Wilson and Rodney G. Davis (University of Illinois Press, 2019).
Related post:
- Carpet-Bag Philosophy
https://melvilliana.blogspot.com/2023/04/carpet-bag-philosophy.html
