The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket

✍ Scribed by Edgar Allan Poe

• Publisher: Penguin Books
• Year: 1838
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 184 KB
• Category: Fiction
• ISBN: 1101157224

✦ Synopsis

{ Oct 2020 - epub revisions. Verified ebook for complete book description, cover, table of contents, content separation, and epub format error checking. }

Paperback, 288 pages
Published 1838
Introduction by: Richard Kopley (1999)
Edgar Allan Poe's only novel, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket is a pivotal work in which Poe calls attention to the act of writing and to the problem of representing the truth.
Poe found the germ of the story in 1836 in a newspaper account of the shipwreck and subsequent rescue of the two men on board. Published in 1838, this rousing sea adventure follows New England boy, Pym, who stows away on a whaling ship with its captain's son, Augustus. The two boys repeatedly find themselves on the brink of death or discovery and witness many terrifying events, including mutiny, cannibalism, and frantic pursuits. Poe imbued this deliberately popular tale with such allegorical richness, biblical imagery, and psychological insights that the tale has come to influence writers as various as Melville, James, Verne and Nabokov.
"So tempting an opportunity of solving the great problem in regard to an Antarctic continent had never yet been afforded to man..."
A stowaway aboard the whaling ship Grampus, Arthur Gordon Pym finds himself bound on an extraordinary voyage to the high southern latitudes. Poe's remarkable novel recounts the "incredible adventures and discoveries" of Pym and his companions. There is mutiny, appalling butchery, and the "exquisite horror" of cannibalism; premature burial within an impenetrable seaborne labyrinth; a corpse-ridden ghost ship, gigantic polar bears, and uncharted islands peopled by barbarian hordes.
It was Poe's unique genius, however, that imbued this Gothic adventure tale with such allegorical richness that readers have been fascinated ever since. In his illuminating introduction and notes to this new edition of Poe's masterpiece, Richard Kopley reveals hidden layers of meaning involving both Poe's family and biblical prophecy.