The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym – Edgar Allan Poe (1957)

S$96.00

The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym – Edgar Allan Poe (1957)

S$96.00

Title: The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym
Author: Edgar Allan Poe, Rene Clarke (illus)
Publisher: The Heritage Press, 1957
Condition: Hardcover, black and white marbled boards with cream spine. Spine slightly discoloured, some wear and rubbing – interior is good. Slipcase in fair condition: beat up, barely holding together.

SKU: narrative-arthur-gordon-pym-poe-heritage Categories: ,

The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket (1838) is the only complete novel written by American writer Edgar Allan Poe.

The work relates the tale of the young Arthur Gordon Pym, who stows away aboard a whaling ship called the Grampus. Various adventures and misadventures befall Pym, including shipwreck, mutiny, and cannibalism, before he is saved by the crew of the Jane Guy. Aboard this vessel, Pym and a sailor named Dirk Peters continue their adventures further south. Docking on land, they encounter hostile black-skinned natives before escaping back to the ocean. The novel ends abruptly as Pym and Peters continue towards the South Pole.

The story starts out as a fairly conventional adventure at sea, but it becomes increasingly strange and hard to classify. Poe, who intended to present a realistic story, was inspired by several real-life accounts of sea voyages, and drew heavily from Jeremiah N. Reynolds and referenced the Hollow Earth theory. He also drew from his own experiences at sea.

One of Poe’s least accessible works, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket has defied a universally accepted interpretation. Poe scholar Scott Peeples wrote that it is “at once a mock nonfictional exploration narrative, adventure saga, bildungsroman, hoax, largely plagiarized travelogue, and spiritual allegory” and “one of the most elusive major texts of American literature”.