1920 September, “A Reformed Free Lance” (pseudonym), “Doctoring a Sick Encyclopedia”, in The Writer, Volume XXXII, Number 9, page 131:
It was a whale of a job. […] It took two months, and the fair blush of youth off my cheeks.

1947 May 19, John Chamberlain, “Will Clayton and his Problem”, in Life, page 120:
But when it comes to his business life and business career, Will Clayton is not as other men; he is such a whale of a lot better that it suggests a qualitative as well as a quantitative difference.

2001, Salman Rushdie, Fury: A Novel, London: Jonathan Cape, page 5:
Passing the Congregation Shearith Israel on Central Park West (a white whale of a building with a triangular pediment supported by four count ’em four massive Corinthian columns), Professor Solanka scurrying through the downpour remembered the newly bat-mitzvahed thirteen-year-old girl he’d glimpsed through the side door, […]