"...so much trash belonging to the worst school of Bedlam literature."

Happy Birthday Moby Dick. Today in 1851, the US saw the first edition of Moby Dick and it was received as nicely as it had the previous month in the UK. It appears the critics might have been wrong...or at least that no one else cared what they thought...either way, its a whale of a book. I've read it twice, once back in HS in, as I recall, a sort of trade paper edition and more recently the Random House trade ed. of the Kent illustrated (I managed not to read either of the Lakeside copies I've had recently). Though many years passed between the readings, I am quite certain the "experience" of reading the book was greatly improved by the Kent illustrations. [thanks to TiL for the reminder]