Monday, January 7, 2019

Missing Table of Contents

"For good reason, then, we regard the Harper edition as the text that Melville wanted published in his lifetime. We have silently corrected obvious printers' errors, but otherwise present the novel as it first appeared in July 1852, which means that there are some inconsistencies.... We have decided not to choose among such variants but to reproduce what the first printing presented." --Robert S. Levine and Cindy Weinstein, A Note on the Text and Annotations in Pierre; or, The Ambiguities (W. W. Norton & Company, 2017), pages xix-xx.

I bought this NCE edition partly because I was curious to learn what if anything the editors made of Melville's reference early in Book I to the "excellent English author of these times." Do they point to Wordsworth in a footnote, I wondered. Yes with two qualifiers, "unclear" and "perhaps." No mention of The Prelude.

On my way to Book I and Wordsworth I noticed (after a side-trip through Melville's illy) the NCE Pierre lacks Melville's original Table of Contents, despite the promise to "present the novel as it first appeared in July 1852." Subsequent page headings in the NCE Pierre do give individual "Book" titles or abbreviated versions, but in the 1852 Harper edition only "PIERRE." appears throughout, at the top of each page after the first page of a new "Book."

Fortunately Harvard University has a first edition of Pierre; or, The Ambiguities, digitized by Google and accessible online in several formats. Students with just the NCE Pierre can get the missing Table of Contents via the Internet Archive.


Alternatively, the same Google-digitzed Harvard volume is also accessible online courtesy of HathiTrust Digital Library.
Print editions that do provide a Table of Contents with Melville's individual Book titles include Pierre, or, The Ambiguities  (New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1929); the 1949 Hendricks House edition of Pierre; or, The Ambiguities edited by Henry A. Murray; and the 1992 Northwestern-Newberry Edition of Melville's Pierre, or The Ambiguities edited by Harrison Hayford, Hershel Parker, and G. Thomas Tanselle.

Transcribed below from the 1852 Harper edition.
[v]

TABLE OF CONTENTS.


BOOK I.
                          Page

PIERRE JUST EMERGING FROM HIS TEENS . . . . . 1

BOOK II.

LOVE, DELIGHT, AND ALARM . . . . . . . . . 26 

BOOK III.

THE PRESENTIMENT AND THE VERIFICATION . . . . 56 

BOOK IV.

RETROSPECTIVE . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89 

BOOK V.

MISGIVINGS AND PREPARATIVES . . . . . . . . 116 

BOOK VI.

ISABEL, AND THE FIRST PART OF THE STORY OF ISABEL 147
 vi

CONTENTS.


BOOK VII.
                                  Page

INTERMEDIATE BETWEEN PIERRE'S TWO INTERVIEWS
   WITH ISABEL AT THE FARM-HOUSE . . . . . . 173


BOOK VIII.

THE SECOND INTERVIEW, AND THE SECOND PART OF
   THE STORY OF ISABEL. THEIR IMMEDIATE IMPULSIVE
   EFFECT UPON PIERRE . . . . . . . . . . . 194


BOOK IX.

MORE LIGHT, AND THE GLOOM OF THAT LIGHT. MORE
   GLOOM, AND THE LIGHT OF THAT GLOOM . . . . 224


BOOK X.

THE UNPRECEDENTED FINAL RESOLUTION OF PIERRE . 233


BOOK XI.

HE CROSSES THE RUBICON . . . . . . . . . . 247


BOOK XII.

ISABEL, MRS. GLENDINNING, THE PORTRAIT, AND LUCY 256


BOOK XIII.

THEY DEPART THE MEADOWS . . . . . . . . . 273

 vii

CONTENTS.


BOOK XIV.
                                   Page

THE JOURNEY AND THE PAMPHLET . . . .  277


BOOK XV.

THE COUSINS . . . . . . . . . . . . .  294


BOOK XVI.

FIRST NIGHT OF THEIR ARRIVAL IN THE CITY . . . 312


BOOK XVII.

YOUNG AMERICA IN LITERATURE . . . . . . . . 333


BOOK XVIII.

PIERRE, AS A JUVENILE AUTHOR, RECONSIDERED . . 350


BOOK XIX.

THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES . . . . . . . . 360


BOOK XX.

CHARLIE MILLTHORPE . . . . . . . . . . . 374


BOOK XXI.

PIERRE IMMATURELY ATTEMPTS A MATURE BOOK. TID-
   INGS PROM THE MEADOWS. PLINLIMMON  . . . .  384
viii

CONTENTS.


BOOK XXII.
                                 Page

THE FLOWER-CURTAIN LIFTED FROM BEFORE A TROPI-
   CAL AUTHOR ; WITH SOME REMARKS ON THE TRAN-
   SCENDENTAL FLESH-BRUSH PHILOSOPHY . . . . . 402


BOOK XXIII.

A LETTER FOR PIERRE. ISABEL. ARRIVAL OF LUCY'S
   EASEL AND TRUNKS AT THE APOSTLES' . . . . . 418


BOOK XXIV.

LUCY AT THE APOSTLES' . . . . . . . . . . 439


BOOK XXV.

LUCY, ISABEL, AND PIERRE. PIERRE AT HIS BOOK.
   ENCELADUS . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  450


BOOK XXVI.

A WALK; A FOREIGN PORTRAIT; A SAIL. AND THE
   END . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  475

Related posts:

  • Melville's illy
    https://melvilliana.blogspot.com/2019/01/melvilles-illy.html

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