skip to main content
the shelf
slower going

Moby-Dick

by Herman Melville

133 chapters · 2,916 readings · about 158 hours of typing at a gentle pace, whenever you feel like it.

start reading

chapters

  1. Loomings
  2. The Carpet-Bag
  3. The Spouter-Inn
  4. The Counterpane
  5. Breakfast
  6. The Street
  7. The Chapel
  8. The Pulpit
  9. The Sermon
  10. A Bosom Friend
  11. Nightgown
  12. Biographical
  13. Wheelbarrow
  14. Nantucket
  15. Chowder
  16. The Ship
  17. The Ramadan
  18. His Mark
  19. The Prophet
  20. All Astir
  21. Going Aboard
  22. Merry Christmas
  23. The Lee Shore
  24. The Advocate
  25. Postscript
  26. Knights and Squires
  27. Knights and Squires
  28. Ahab
  29. Enter Ahab; to Him, Stubb
  30. The Pipe
  31. Queen Mab
  32. Cetology
  33. The Specksnyder
  34. The Cabin-Table
  35. The Mast-Head
  36. The Quarter-Deck
  37. Sunset
  38. Dusk
  39. First Night-Watch
  40. Midnight, Forecastle
  41. Moby Dick
  42. The Whiteness of the Whale
  43. Hark!
  44. The Chart
  45. The Affidavit
  46. Surmises
  47. The Mat-Maker
  48. The First Lowering
  49. The Hyena
  50. Ahab's Boat and Crew. Fedallah
  51. The Spirit-Spout
  52. The Albatross
  53. The Gam
  54. The Town-Ho's Story
  55. Of the Monstrous Pictures of Whales
  56. Brit
  57. Squid
  58. The Line
  59. Stubb Kills a Whale
  60. The Dart
  61. The Crotch
  62. Stubb's Supper
  63. The Whale as a Dish
  64. The Shark Massacre
  65. Cutting In
  66. The Blanket
  67. The Funeral
  68. The Sphynx
  69. The Jeroboam's Story
  70. The Monkey-Rope
  71. Stubb and Flask kill a Right Whale; and Then Have a Talk over Him
  72. The Sperm Whale's Head-Contrasted View
  73. The Right Whale's Head-Contrasted View
  74. The Battering-Ram
  75. The Great Heidelburgh Tun
  76. Cistern and Buckets
  77. The Prairie
  78. The Nut
  79. The Pequod Meets The Virgin
  80. The Honor and Glory of Whaling
  81. Jonah Historically Regarded
  82. Pitchpoling
  83. The Fountain
  84. The Tail
  85. The Grand Armada
  86. Schools and Schoolmasters
  87. Fast-Fish and Loose-Fish
  88. Heads or Tails
  89. The Pequod Meets The Rose-Bud
  90. Ambergris
  91. The Castaway
  92. A Squeeze of the Hand
  93. The Cassock
  94. The Try-Works
  95. The Lamp
  96. Stowing Down and Clearing Up
  97. The Doubloon
  98. Leg and Arm
  99. The Decanter
  100. A Bower in the Arsacides
  101. Measurement of The Whale's Skeleton
  102. The Fossil Whale
  103. Does the Whale's Magnitude Diminish?-Will He Perish?
  104. Ahab's Leg
  105. The Carpenter
  106. Ahab and the Carpenter
  107. Ahab and Starbuck in the Cabin
  108. Queequeg in His Coffin
  109. The Pacific
  110. The Blacksmith
  111. The Forge
  112. The Gilder
  113. The Pequod Meets The Bachelor
  114. The Dying Whale
  115. The Whale Watch
  116. The Quadrant
  117. The Candles
  118. The Deck Towards the End of the First Night Watch
  119. Midnight.-The Forecastle Bulwarks
  120. Midnight Aloft.-Thunder and Lightning
  121. The Musket
  122. The Needle
  123. The Log and Line
  124. The Life-Buoy
  125. The Deck
  126. The Pequod Meets The Rachel
  127. The Cabin
  128. The Hat
  129. The Pequod Meets The Delight
  130. The Symphony
  131. The Chase-First Day
  132. The Chase-Second Day
  133. The Chase.-Third Day

how it starts

the first passage, exactly as you'd type it.

Call me Ishmael. Some years ago-never mind how long precisely-having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen and regulating the circulation.

nothing is saved — this is a taste. your place is only kept once you start reading.

where the text comes from

these books come from Project Gutenberg, a volunteer library of public-domain works. they are free to use, in the United States and most of the world, at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever — you may copy them, give them away, or re-use them under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License.

our copies are not untouched. we normalise typography (curly quotes and dashes become the ones on your keyboard), fold the occasional accented letter no key can produce, and cut each chapter into passages. a character you cannot type is a dead end in a typing exercise, so nothing here is left unreachable.

Project Gutenberg is a registered trademark of the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. they are not affiliated with lowkey type and do not endorse it.