Saturday Scenes

On the 14th of November 1851, Harper & Brothers in New York published a thick novel which was initially entitled The Whale. The initial publication in London, known as the Bentley edition, was cleaned up “to avoid offending delicate political and moral sensibilities” and the epilogue was inadvertantly omitted, so the US edition was the first full volume of the now famous novel starting, “Call me Ishmael.”

The Writer’s Almanac: Nov. 14, 2009

It was on this day in 1851 that Herman Melville’s novel Moby-Dick was published, and it was a total flop. He had poured his heart and soul into the novel and he thought it was his masterpiece, but neither the critics nor readers agreed with him. His readers wanted a swashbuckling adventure story, like Melville’s earlier novels, so Moby-Dick was too heavy and allegorical for most people. Only about 2,300 copies sold in the year and a half after it was published, and in the next 40 years after that, only about 1,000 more copies were sold. It wasn’t until the 20th century that reviewers dug it up and started to take it seriously.

You can read Moby-Dick online at a number of different websites.

Meanwhile, hearts and souls were poured into these masterpieces taken on the 14th of November 2009, so be sure to click through!

Say hello to the great people who submitted this week:

• Pewari
• robert_t
• Vaxanta
• tartanink
• sarahfenn
• capo42
• raumsinn
• akrabat
• RAFairman
• 7of12
• drewbenn
• pixelfreund
• ColinBrooks
• Neal55
• Dramagirl

This Saturday, make sure to watch the @SatScenes/ saturday-scenes list and you can see the photography as it happens! How cool is that?

If you want to get added to the list, just take part! Every Saturday, people share their photographs of their day, making the world that little bit smaller.

All you need to do is:

1. Take a photo on a Saturday
2. Send the link as a reply to @SatScenes on Twitter with the location
3. Bask in the glory of representing your corner of the world

So what are you waiting for?