I have chosen for my 2011 Folio society membership the limited edition of Moby Dick written by Herman Melville and illustrated
by Rockwell Kent.
Approached in 1926 by publisher R. R. Donnelley to produce an
illustrated edition of Richard Henry
Dana, Jr.'s Two Years Before
the Mast, Kent suggested Moby-Dick
instead. Published in 1930 by the Lakeside Press
of Chicago, the limited edition filled with Kent 's haunting black-and-white
pen/brush and ink drawings sold out immediately; Random House produced a trade
edition which was also immensely popular. A previously obscure book, Moby Dick had been rediscovered by critics in the early 1920s. The success
of the Rockwell Kent illustrated edition was a factor in its becoming
recognized as the classic it is today.