*On pre-sale now; ships fall 2019.

The following is an exclusive, limited-time offer. Your order will include two books: Moby-Dick: Illustrated by Gilbert Wilson (regularly $50), and Unfinished and Unbroken: The Life of Artist Gilbert Wilson (regularly $24.95), for the special price of $60.

Details for each book below: 

MOBY-DICK: ILLUSTRATED BY GILBERT WILSON

500 pages, 150+ illustrations
7½ × 9¼ in. 
19.05 × 23.495 cm.

Hat & Beard Press is celebrating Herman Melville’s 200th birthday with a full-color edition of Moby-Dick, illustrated by the rediscovered art of Gilbert Wilson. Moby-Dick became Wilson’s lifetime obsession, producing more than 200 paintings and drawings based on the novel, and helping to inspire John Huston’s 1956 film adaptation starring Gregory Peck and Orson Welles. Of Wilson, Huston declared, “[he is] a brilliant artist and one of America’s foremost painters.”

This large, coffee-table book will showcase never-before-published artwork, notes, and meditations on the novel—drawing from unprecedented access to Wilson’s estate. The book will also provide a platform for the international art community to reassess and rediscover this remarkable man and his work.

The edition also pays homage to Melville’s original text, while breathing new life into the story via Wilson’s vibrant, timeless artwork. Critics have called Moby-Dick “the most ambitious book ever conceived by an American writer”—and Gilbert Wilson’s version will be the most ambitious illustrated edition of that book.

UNFINISHED AND UNBROKEN: THE LIFE OF ARTIST GILBERT WILSON

315 pages + illustrations
5 × 7 in. 
12.7 × 17.78 cm.

Additionally, a never-before-published biography of Gilbert Wilson, written by Edward K. Spann, will be included with the illustrated Moby-Dick as a separate volume. Originally slated for publication in the 2000s, the project slipped into limbo when 1) Spann died while editing the book and 2) his chosen press changed its publishing model, leaving the book without a home. Spann’s Unfinished and Unbroken: The Life of Artist Gilbert Wilson is an authoritative and expansive look at Wilson’s life and art, edited by the careful and committed Robert K. Elder.

Includes a foreword by Elder and an introduction by Edward K. Spann.

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Edited by Robert K. Elder
Images courtesy of the Swope Art Museum