William Logan 'On contemporary reviews of Moby-Dick and Melville’s journey on the Acushnet' at The New Criterion.
"As there was no international copyright agreement, Herman Melville indulged in a complicated jig of shifts and dodges to prevent piracy—British and American copyrights had to be obtained separately. One of the dodges was to bring the British edition out first but follow so rapidly with the American that the latter was published before it could be hijacked by pirate-printers."
See Melville, Billy Budd, in Gateway to the Great Books, volume 3, and Moby-Dick; or The Whale, in Great Books of the Western World (first edition, 1952) volume 48, (second edition, 1990) volume 48
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