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, savagery—even 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