TQS StaffToday’s Google Doodle celebrates the 161st anniversary of the publication of Herman Melville’s great American novel Moby Dick which was first published on October 18th 1851 in Britain.
If you’ve never read Herman Melville’s Moby Dick or want to discover it in a new way, Plymouth University are currently running an interesting campaign; ‘Moby Dick The Big Read’.
The campaign sees the daily online release of chapters recorded by a host of international and national celebrities including, Stephen Fry, Sir David Attenborough, Benedict Cumberbatch and Tilda Swinton. The audio will be accompanied by images from some of the biggest names in the contemporary art world, including Gavin Turk, Anish Kapoor and Susan Hiller. The campaign launched back in September so is currently up to Chapter 32 (Cetelogy, Read by Martin Atril) find out more and listen along here.
Not convinced? From their website:
Herman Melville created a unique work of art – as unique as Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein or Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights, as mythic as Coleridge’s Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner – a true force of nature, set in a century that challenged every tenet of faith that had been held until then. Melville’s book – is it barely a novel – exceeds every expectation of a literary work. It bursts out of its covers with the enormity of its subject – as if the great White Whale itself were contained within.
By Jamie McHale
