The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket

HarperCollins is proud to present its incredible range of best-loved, essential classics.

‘It was unnecessary for all to perish, when, by the death of one, it was possible, and even probable, that the rest might be finally preserved.’

Travelling aboard a whaling vessel, a young stowaway is swept up in myriad misadventures – mutiny, shipwreck, cannibalism – narrowly escaping numerous brushes with death. This rousing story of a daring sea voyage also presents its antihero with a host of psychological dilemmas, and offers an important insight into Poe’s work as a whole.

The only complete novel by infamous gothic horror writer Edgar Allan Poe, ‘The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket’ has inspired other classic tales of maritime adventure, such as Herman Melville’s ‘Moby-Dick’ and Jules Verne’s ‘Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea’.

Reviews

‘[Poe] was an adventurer into the vaults and cellars and horrible underground passages of the human soul.’ D. H. Lawrence

‘The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket makes its way to a climax as strange and powerful as anything to be found in [Poe’s] greatest tales.’ New York Review of Books

About the author

Edgar Allan Poe was an American author, poet, editor and literary critic. A writer of fantastical, bizarre and sometimes disturbing short stories, he is best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre. He lived and worked in the first half of the nineteenth century and died a mysterious death, many believe caused by an overdose of drugs, at the age of 40 in 1849.