Pierre: Or the Ambiguities

Blurb

Pierre; or, The Ambiguities is a novel, the seventh book, by American writer Herman Melville, first published in New York in 1852. The plot, which uses many conventions of Gothic fiction, develops the psychological, sexual, and family tensions between Pierre Glendenning; his widowed mother; Glendenning Stanley, his cousin; Lucy Tartan, his fiancee; and Isabel Banford, who is revealed to be his half-sister.
Coming after the lukewarm reaction to Moby-Dick, Pierre was a critical and financial disaster. Reviewers universally condemned both its morals and its style. Critics have more recently shown greater sympathy, seeing it as a "psychological novel -- a study of the moods, thought processes, and perceptions of his hero." With the exception of Israel Potter, he never published another conventional novel, although he subsequently wrote and published many stories, including Bartleby, the Scrivener and Benito Cereno, and the experimental novel, The Confidence-Man.