PIERRE Or, The Ambiguities

London: Constable & Co., 1923. Rare First Edition in the Constable printing of Melville's Works. One of 750 copies only Large 8vo, publishers original blue cloth lettered in gilt and stamped in blind, t.e.g. x, 505 pp. A superior copy of this very scarce book, fine and bright and unusually well preserved, without wear or blemish, unopened, as pristine and essentially mint. RARE FIRST EDITION OF PIERRE OR, THE AMBIGUITIES, IN THE CONSTABLE COLLECTION, A HIGHLY REGARDED PRINTING OF MELVILLE'S WORKS.
Between 1875 and 1920 Melville had fallen deep into obscurity. William P. Trent's A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE, 1903, gives Melville but three pages out of 593, and Wendell and Greenough's A HISTORY OF LITERATURE IN AMERICA, 1904, gives him nothing at all. The author's star began to rise in 1921 with the publication of Weaver's biography.
The first volume of the collected works was published the following year and did much to expand American awareness of Melville's art. It stands alone as a truly important edition with the inclusion of all of Melville's work known at the time including 'The Poems' and 'Billy Budd,' both of which were here published separately for the first time. PIERRE Or, The Ambiguities appears as Volume IX of the Standard Edition set.
In 1852, PIERRE followed MOBY DICK in the Melville oeuvre. It has been said that if one wants to make sure that Melville must take his place among the masters, then one need only turn to the passages in this book called Enceladus, and to the discourse by Plotinas Plinlimmon on Chronometricals and Horologicals.
‘When you have read PIERRE you can make a guess at what Melville meant by something greater than a symbolical whale, something worse than the anger of gods who were too closely beset by importunate men. In PIERRE, you will see that Melville himself was overcome by the terror of a shadow much more ominous than the quarry Captain Ahab hunted in the other book. Melville meant for us to discover the ambiguity of both good and evil. There is an attempt here to follow a noble aim to its ultimate in the nature of man.’