Pierre Or, The Ambiguities: A Norton Critical Edition (Norton Critical Editions)

ISBN: 0393938948

Author: Melville, Herman

Condition: New

When Pierre was published one year after Moby-Dick, expectations were high. Readers expected-and Melville delivered-adventure, humor, and brilliance. Magnificent and strange, Pierre is a richly allusive novel mirroring both antebellum America and Melvilles own life. This Norton Critical Edition includes: The Harper & Brothers 1852 first edition of the novel, accompanied by Robert S. Levine and Cindy Weinsteins editorial matter. Six illustrations. Contextual and source materials, including letters, responses to Pierre by Melvilles contemporaries, and works by Daniel Webster, Thomas Cole, James Fenimore Cooper, Lydia Maria Child, and Nathaniel Hawthorne, among others, that give readers a sense of Pierres time and place. Seven critical essays on Pierres major themes by Sacvan Bercovitch, James Creech, Samuel Otter, Wyn Kelley, Cindy Weinstein, Jeffory A. Clymer, and Dominic Mastroianni. A Chronology and a Selected Bibliography.