Two Years Before the Mast: A Personal Narrative of Life at Sea

Dana, Jr., Richard Henry; Mueller, Hans Alexander [Illustrator]

Published by Easton Press, 1969

About this Item

Bound in full leather. Stamped with 22kt gold gilt design on cover front, back and spine. All edges gold. Silk moire fabric end papers. Satin ribbon place holder. Fine binding and cover. Minor shelf wear. Clean, unmarked pages. For more than 30 years, the Easton Press has been the standard for finely bound, profusely gilt classic leather bindings. "An astonishingly effective memoir of life as an ordinary seaman quartered 'before the mast' in the squalid space below decks, the book, a sensation in its own time, is a model of reportage, rife with the nautical jargon of a specialist and an anthropologist's descriptive mastery of life aboard ship and in the Pilgrim's then-exotic ports of call. It would influence generations of readers and writers and remains a mainstay on American reading lists. Dana's voyage took him into the south Atlantic Ocean, around Cape Horn, and to Alta California, then a sparsely settled province of Mexico. The ship's mission was to obtain cattle hides from ranchers at San Diego, Santa Barbara and other points along the coast. A naif not yet prejudiced by experience, Dana shares something new on every page: whale songs and icebergs, smashing storms, the captain's violent discipline, the total silence of the sea at night." - Smithsonian Magazine.

Seller Inventory # 2205040008

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Two Years Before the Mast: A Personal Narrative of Life at Sea
• Publisher: Easton Press
• Publication Date: 1969
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: As New
• Seller catalogs:
  • Nautical