Pierre (Or, the Ambiguities)

Pierre: or, The Ambiguities (1852) is a novel by American writer Herman Melville. Published the year after Moby-Dicka critical and commercial failurePierre: or, The Ambiguities is a psychological novel in the tradition of Gothic fiction. Melville struggled to find a publisher who would pay him in advance for the book, and its appearance prompted widespread ridicule and condemnation in the press, with some critics claiming that Melville himself had gone mad. The novel plunged Melville deeper into financial ruin, and all but ensured that his next novels, Israel Potter and The Confidence-Man, would be his last.

Pierre Glendinning Jr. is a nineteen-year-old heir who lives with his widowed mother at their family manor in upstate New York. Engaged to the beautiful and respectable Lucy Tartan, Pierre stands to inheritwith his mothers approvala life of comfort and wealth. When he meets a young woman named Isabel Banford, his fathers illegitimate daughter, Pierre devises a plan he believes will solve everyones problems: he will marry Isabel, who will inherit her share of their fathers wealth, thereby preserving his fathers honor and sparing his mother the embarrassment of her husbands infidelity. Pierre marries Isabel in secret, and when he tells his mother is thrown out of the house and cut off from his family for good. He moves with Isabel to New York City, where he hopes to make a life for himself as a writer, but the sins of the past refuse to let him rest as he wrestles with his choices and discovers the true nature of his seemingly good intentions.

With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Herman Melvilles Pierre: or, The Ambiguities is a classic of American literature reimagined for modern readers.