Pierre by Herman Melville
Pierre; or, The Ambiguities tells the story of Pierre Glendinning Jr., the 19-year-old heir of the manor at Saddle Meadows in New York. Pierre is engaged to Lucy Tartan in a match approved by his domineering mother, who controls the estate adter the death of his father. He encounters the dark and mysterious Isabel Banford discovering that she is the illegitimate and orphaned child of his father and a European refugee. Pierre devises a scheme to preserve his father's name, spare his mother's grief, and give Isabel her proper share of the estate. Herman Melville was an American writer of novels, short stories and poetry. Melville was a schoolteacher for a short time and a seaman. On his first voyage he jumped ship in the Marquesas Islands. His first book, Typee, was an account of that time and became a bestseller and Melville became known as the man who lived among the cannibals. Public indifference to Moby-Dick put an end to his career as a popular author. It was not until the Melville Revival in the early 20th century that his work won recognition.
Herman Melville (1819-91) became in his late twenties a highly successful author of exotic novels based on his experiences as a sailor - writing in quick succession Typee, Omoo, Redburn and White-Jacket. However, his masterpiece Moby-Dick was met with incomprehension and the other later works which are now the basis of his reputation, such as Bartleby, the Scrivener and The Confidence-Man, were failures. Melville stopped writing fiction and the rest of his long life was spent first as a lecturer and then, for nineteen years, as a customs official in New York City. He was also the author of the immensely long poem Clarel, which was similarly dismissed. At the end of his life he wrote Billy Budd, Sailor which was published posthumously in 1924.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780140434842 |
| ISBN 10 | 0140434844 |
| Title | Pierre |
| Author | Herman Melville |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | Penguin Books Ltd |
| Year published | 1996-05-30 |
| Number of pages | 416 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |