The part missing from the first British edition of “Moby-Dick” was the epilogue. Published in London on October 18, 1851, the British edition appeared in three volumes under the title The Whale, before the American edition used Melville’s preferred title.
The omitted epilogue explains how Ishmael survives the destruction of the Pequod. Without it, British readers encountered a first-person narrator who seemed to have died with everyone else, creating confusion in early reviews. The omission was probably a printer’s error, though the British edition also contained extensive censorship and editorial changes.
The British text differed from the American edition in hundreds of wordings and many punctuation changes. It also removed or altered passages involving religion, sexuality, royalty, and perceived grammatical irregularities. The American edition, published in New York on November 14, 1851, restored the epilogue and preserved Ishmael’s famous survival on Queequeg’s coffin.