The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket

After reading an 1836 newspaper account of a shipwreck and its two survivors, Edgar Allan Poe penned his only novel, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket, the story of a stowaway on a Nantucket whaleship who finds himself enmeshed in the dark side of life at sea: mutiny, cannibalism, savageryeven death. As Jeffrey Meyers writes in his Introduction: "[Poe] remains contemporary because he appeals to basic human feelings and expresses universal themes common to all men in all languages: dreams, love, loss; grief, mourning, alienation; terror, revenge, murder; insanity, disease, and death." Within the pages of this novel, we encounter nearly all of them. This Modern Library Paperback Classic reprints the text of the original 1838 American edition. From the Trade Paperback edition.

<b>Jeffrey Meyers</b>, a distinguished biographer, is the author of <i>Edgar Allan Poe, D. H. Lawrence</i>, and <i>Joseph Conrad</i>, among others. He lives in Berkeley, California.