The reception of The Whale in Britain and of Moby-Dick in the United States differed in two ways, according to Parker. First, British literary criticism was more sophisticated and developed than in the still-young republic, with British reviewing done by "cadres of brilliant literary people"[149] who were "experienced critics and trenchant prose stylists",[150] while the United States had only "a handful of reviewers" capable enough to be called critics, and American editors and reviewers habitually echoed British opinion.[149] American reviewing was mostly delegated to "newspaper staffers" or else by "amateur contributors more noted for religious piety than critical acumen."[150] Second, the differences between the two editions caused "two distinct critical receptions."[151]
British
Twenty-one reviews appeared in London, and later one in Dublin.[150] The British reviewers, according to Parker, mostly regarded The Whale as "a phenomenal literary work, a philosophical, metaphysical, and poetic romance".[5] The Morning Advertiser for October 24 was in awe of Melville's learning, of his "dramatic ability for producing a prose poem", and of the whale adventures which were "powerful in their cumulated horrors."[152] To its surprise, John Bull found "philosophy in whales" and "poetry in blubber", and concluded that few books that claimed to be either philosophical or literary works "contain as much true philosophy and as much genuine poetry as the tale of the Pequod's whaling expedition", making it a work "far beyond the level of an ordinary work of fiction".[153] The Morning Post found it "one of the cleverest, wittiest, and most amusing of modern books", and predicted that it was a book "which will do great things for the literary reputation of its author".[153]
Melville himself never saw these reviews, and Parker calls it a "bitter irony" that the reception overseas was "all he could possibly have hoped for, short of a few conspicuous proclamations that the distance between him and Shakespeare was by no means immeasurable."[154]
One of the earliest reviews, by the extremely conservative critic Henry Chorley[136] in the highly regarded London Athenaeum, described it as
[A]n ill-compounded mixture of romance and matter-of-fact. The idea of a connected and collected story has obviously visited and abandoned its writer again and again in the course of composition. The style of his tale is in places disfigured by mad (rather than bad) English; and its catastrophe is hastily, weakly, and obscurely managed.
According to the London Literary Gazette and Journal of Science and Art for December 6, 1851, "Mr. Melville cannot do without savages, so he makes half of his dramatis personae wild Indians, Malays, and other untamed humanities", who appeared in "an odd book, professing to be a novel; wantonly eccentric, outrageously bombastic; in places charmingly and vividly descriptive".[155] Most critics regretted the extravagant digressions because they distracted from an otherwise interesting and even exciting narrative, but even critics who did not like the book as a whole praised Melville's originality of imagination and expression.[156]
Because the English edition omitted the epilogue describing Ishmael's escape, British reviewers read a book with a first-person narrator who apparently did not survive.[5] The reviewer of the Literary Gazette asked how Ishmael, "who appears to have been drowned with the rest, communicated his notes to Mr. Bentley".[155] The reviewer in the Spectator objected that "nothing should be introduced into a novel which it is physically impossible for the writer to have known: thus, he must not describe the conversation of miners in a pit if they all perish."[157] The Dublin University Magazine asked "how does it happen that the author is alive to tell the story?" [157] A few other reviewers, who did not comment upon the apparent impossibility of Ishmael telling the story, pointed out violations of narrative conventions in other passages.
Other reviewers accepted the flaws they perceived. John Bull praised the author for making literature out of unlikely and even unattractive matter, and the Morning Post found that delight far outstripped the improbable character of events.[158] Though some reviewers viewed the characters, especially Ahab, as exaggerated, others felt that it took an extraordinary character to undertake the battle with the white whale. Melville's style was often praised, although some found it excessive or too American.[159]
American
Some sixty reviews appeared in America, the criterion for counting as a review being more than two lines of comment.[160] Only a couple of reviewers expressed themselves early enough not to be influenced by news of the British reception.[149] Though Moby-Dick did contain the Epilogue and so accounted for Ishmael's survival, the British reviews influenced the American reception. The earliest American review, in the Boston Post for November 20, quoted the London Athenaeum's scornful review, not realizing that some of the criticism of The Whale did not pertain to Moby-Dick. This last point, and the authority and influence of British criticism in American reviewing, is clear from the review's opening: "We have read nearly one half of this book, and are satisfied that the London Athenaeum is right in calling it 'an ill-compounded mixture of romance and matter-of-fact'".[161] Though the Post quoted the greater portion of the review, it omitted the condensed extract of Melville's prose the Athenaeum had included to give readers an example of it. The Post deemed the price of one dollar and fifty cents far too much: "'The Whale' is not worth the money asked for it, either as a literary work or as a mass of printed paper".[162]
The New York North American Miscellany for December summarized the verdict in the Athenaeum. The reviewer of the December New York Eclectic Magazine had actually read Moby-Dick in full, and was puzzled why the Athenaeum was so scornful of the ending. The attack on The Whale by the Spectator was reprinted in the December New York International Magazine, which inaugurated the influence of another unfavorable review. Rounding off what American readers were told about the British reception, in January Harper's Monthly Magazine attempted some damage control, and wrote that the book had "excited a general interest" among the London magazines.[163]
The most influential American review, ranked according to the number of references to it, appeared in the weekly magazine Literary World, which had printed Melville's "Mosses" essay the preceding year. The author of the unsigned review in two installments, on November 15 and 22, was later identified as publisher Evert Duyckinck.[164] The first half of the first installment was devoted to an event of remarkable coincidence: early in the month, between the publishing of the British and the American edition, a whale had sunk the New Bedford whaler Ann Alexander near Chile.[165]
In the second installment, Duyckinck described Moby-Dick as three books rolled into one: he was pleased with the book as far as it was a thorough account of the sperm whale, less so with it as far as the adventures of the Pequod crew were considered, perceiving the characters as unrealistic and expressing inappropriate opinions on religions, and condemned the essayistic rhapsodizing and moralizing with what he thought was little respect of what "must be to the world the most sacred associations of life violated and defaced."[166] The review prompted Hawthorne to take the "unusually aggressive step of reproving Duyckinck" by criticizing the review in a letter to Duyckinck of December 1:[167]
What a book Melville has written! It gives me an idea of much greater power than his preceding ones. It hardly seemed to me that the review of it, in the Literary World, did justice to its best points.[168]
The Transcendental socialist George Ripley published a review in the New York Tribune for November 22, in which he compared the book favorably to Mardi, because the "occasional touches of the subtle mysticism" was not carried on to excess but kept within boundaries by the solid realism of the whaling context.[169] Ripley was almost surely also the author of the review in Harper's for December, which saw in Ahab's quest the "slight framework" for something else: "Beneath the whole story, the subtle, imaginative reader may perhaps find a pregnant allegory, intended to illustrate the mystery of human life."[170] Among the handful of other favorable reviews was one in the Albion on November 22 which saw the book as a blend of truth and satire.[171]
Melville's friend Nathaniel Parker Willis, reviewing the book in November 29 Home Journal, found it "a very racy, spirited, curious and entertaining book ... it enlists the curiosity, excites the sympathies, and often charms the fancy".[170] In December 6 Spirit of the Times, editor William T. Porter praised the book, and all of Melville's five earlier works, as the writings "of a man who is at once philosopher, painter, and poet".[170] Some other, shorter reviews mixed their praise with genuine reservations about the "irreverence and profane jesting", as the New Haven Daily Palladium for November 17 phrased it. Many reviewers, Parker observes, had come to the conclusion that Melville was capable of producing enjoyable romances, but they could not see in him the author of great literature.[172]
Reviewers who actually did read the book "found much to praise," Robertson-Lorant writes, but conservative reviewers did not like it. A friend of Duyckinck's, William Allen Butler, protested in the National Intelligencer against "the querulous and cavilling innuendoes" and the "irreverent wit," while the Boston Post called it "a crazy sort of affair."[173]
