October 18

On the 18th in 1851, publisher Richard Bentley published a new book by Herman Melville. Titled The Whale it was a three volume expurgated edition of Melville’s massive work. The following November 14, it would be published in New York by Harper and Brothers in one volume entitled Moby-Dick, or The Whale.

Bentley’s grandson would mention in a book about Bentley that he had a fondness for wine, “preferring port to claret which he said would be port if it could ".