Poe, Edgar Allen. Arthur Gordon Pym: A Romance. Illustrated by A. D> McCormick. New York: New Amsterdam Book Company, [n.d., 1889]
pp. vi-, 265, frontispeice (with gaurd tissue), 7 illustrations, 1 p. adverts. Pages bright and crisp without foxing or blemish. Bright blue publisher’s cloth binding with gilt decoration with title and author on cover and spine. Endbands and corners minorly bumped. Minor discoloration to back cover.
Rare 1880s edition of Poe’s only novel.
About the Work
First published in 1838, Arthur Gordon Pym is Edgar Allan Poe’s only complete novel—an unsettling fusion of nautical adventure, gothic horror, and proto–science fiction. The narrative follows young Pym, a stowaway aboard the whaler Grampus, through mutiny, shipwreck, starvation, and cannibalism, before he is taken aboard the Jane Guy. Pym and his companion Dirk Peters push ever farther south, into strange and violent encounters, until the book ends abruptly in the icy mystery of the Antarctic.
The tale, with its blend of exploration, horror, and enigma, directly influenced Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick and foreshadowed the Antarctic imaginings of Jules Verne, who even attempted a sequel (An Antarctic Mystery, 1897). Copies of this scarce 1880s edition remain highly collectible, representing both Poe’s literary ambition and his restless crossing of genre boundaries.
About the Author
Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849) stands as one of the most important figures of American Romanticism and gothic literature. Known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, he was also a pioneer of detective fiction and an early architect of science fiction. Poe was the first American writer to live solely by his pen—a precarious career marked by brilliance, poverty, and tragedy. His legacy has haunted and shaped literature ever since.
Rare in any condition, this 1880s edition remains a striking survival of Poe’s darkest voyage—a book adrift between adventure, nightmare, and myth.