Between the Covers

Softcover. First edition. Octavo. 31pp. Printed gray wrappers. Spine reinforced with old canvas repair, two old and faint embossed stamps of an historical society, a number of small nicks and modest tears, mostly on the wrappers, about very good. Epistolary account written for his friends and colleagues by the author, a professor of German literature at N.Y.U., defending his own honor, explaining his absence from teaching necessitated by a "disordered mind" and the consequences of his psychological crisis, particularly commenting on the inadequacy of Bloomingdale Asylum's response to his febrile state of mind.

Melville met Adler, a linguist specializing in German at New York University, on a transatlantic voyage in 1849. Melville wrote that Adler was "an exceedingly amiable man and a fine scholar," who was also "author of a formidable lexicon (German and English); in compiling which he almost ruined his health. He was almost crazy, he tells me, for a time." Soon afterwards, Adler began work on a Latin dictionary project which purportedly drove him insane, and he was admitted to Bloomingdale Asylum in 1853; Melville would later attend Adler's funeral after he died at Bloomingdale Asylum in 1868.

Adler has been suggested by scholars as at least a partial inspiration for two of Herman Melville's characters: Bartleby the Scrivener and Captain Ahab. Although Melville drew on several influences for Bartleby, some scholars have suggested Adler as a model for the eponymous main character. Similarly Adler's obsessive and megalomaniacal intensity has been mentioned as part of the development of the character of Captain Ahab. Scarce.

Item #629335