October 18 in Victorian History
What the Victorians were up to on this date, year by remarkable year.
1851
Moby-Dick is published in London
Richard Bentley publishes Herman Melville's whaling epic in London as The Whale -- a month before the American edition appears as Moby-Dick. British reviewers are baffled; sales are dismal. A century later it will be called the great American novel.