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Saturday, February 15, 2020

Pierre in Louisville KY

George D. Prentice
via NYPL Digital Collections
Here is the one usable review of Melville's Pierre; or, The Ambiguities, later excerpted in publisher's ads that credited (by mistake?) the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin. I'm guessing this review of Pierre in the Louisville Daily Journal might have found its way into the Louisville Evening Bulletin, another daily and weekly newspaper commenced in November 1851 by Journal editor George D. Prentice. Hypothetically then, whoever supplied the Harpers with Louisville excerpts may have correctly attributed them to the "Evening Bulletin," resulting eventually in a mix-up with the better known Philadelphia newspaper, Cummings' Evening Bulletin. Alternatively, perhaps the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin reprinted it from the Louisville Journal.

The August 7, 1852 issue of Cummings' Evening Bulletin did contain an early review of Pierre, as Gary Scharnhorst reports in "More Nineteenth-Century Melville Reviews," Melville Society Extracts Number 89 (June 1992), pages 1-6 at page 2. However, as partially quoted by Scharnhorst the Evening Bulletin in Philadelphia had a different take on the "strange, wild romance" that opens "in a strain of rhapsodical and extravagant poetry" but "soon subsides to a mystical, dark tone of sober prose." The Philadelphia reviewer commented on Melville's "most unnatural characters and improbable scenes" and noted "the terrible catastrophe" with which the novel ends, unsuccessfully: "...the reader closes it with an unsatisfied feeling, for which the interest of the scenes and the evident talent of the author afford no compensation."

By contrast, the Louisville reviewer demonstrates a more poetic sensibility, finding Melville's language "beautiful, and wonderful" as well as "wild." This appreciative critic, maybe Journal editor and poet George Denison Prentice, not only perceives the influences of Dante and Shakespeare, but also finds value in the later authorship chapters as a kind of cautionary tale for ambitious writers. The New York advertisements cited below omit that part of the Louisville review, as well as the more ominous closing reference to the Rev. Charles Robert Maturin as mad Gothic playwright and novelist:
"Take it altogether, Pierre is a rare and singular book. But if Mr. Melville is in search of immortality, we commend him to the study of Maturin's kindred style, and the results."
The Louisville reviewer's attention to specific chapters on authorship starting with "Young America in Literature" is unique in early criticism of Melville's seventh book. As Brian Higgins and Hershel Parker note in Reading Melville's Pierre; or, The Ambiguities (Louisiana State University Press, 2006) at page 198, "reviewers almost unanimously ignored the section on Pierre as an author."

 George D. Prentice was the "witty editor of the Louisville Journal" who, as Allan Melville informed Herman on October 17, 1844, had been "right down upon" their brother Gansevoort Melville, campaigning for the Democrats in the south and west. Allan's long (and still "unlocated"?) letter to Herman is transcribed in the 1993 Northwestern-Newberry Edition of Melville's Correspondence, edited by Lynn Horth, pages 565-571. To Allan's point about the abuse of Gansevoort by Prentice: on September 19, 1844 the Extra edition of the Louisville Journal claimed that Gansevoort "made the very poorest and most meagre speech, that we ever heard from a man of any pretension. He had neither logic nor facts nor eloquence nor plausibility nor sense nor even respectable declamation."

Sat, Aug 14, 1852 – 2 · () · Newspapers.com
Pierre, or the Ambiguities. By Herman Melville. Harper & Brothers. 
Mr. Melville has cut the acquaintance of Polynesia, and has made a domestic story, as wild, wonderful, and tragical as he ever conjured from the tropical wilds of the coral islands of the Pacific. Pierre is a curious mixture of Dante's Inferno, and of Hamlet. It is worthy of its name--"the Ambiguities." Pierre, Lucy Tartan, Mrs. Glendenning, and Isabel are creations that could have come from no other source than Melville's mind. There is ambiguity from one end of the book to the other, but it is clothed with language singularly wild, beautiful, and wonderful. There are slips of the pen, though, at times, that should not disfigure the work of such a master as Melville. For instance, he makes Isabel say: "till some employ should offer."
Still, there may be a moral in this strange and singular work. The aspirant to the honors of magazine literature, and those who have ambition to use author-craft as a staff, may learn some useful lessons from the chapters entitled "Young America in Literature," "A Juvenile Author Reconsidered," "Immature Attempts at a Matured Book," and "The Flower-curtain Lifted from before a Tropical Author; with some remarks on the Transcendental Flesh-brush Philosophy." Take it altogether, Pierre is a rare and singular book. But if Mr. Melville is in search of immortality, we commend him to the study of Maturin's kindred style, and the results.
--Louisville Daily Journal (Louisville, Kentucky) August 14, 1852.
Excerpted in publisher's advertisements and attributed to the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, for example in the New York Literary World on October 16, 1852


Mr. Melville has cut the acquaintance of Polynesia, and has made a domestic story, as wild, wonderful, and tragical as he ever conjured from the tropical wilds of the coral islands of the Pacific. Pierre is a curious mixture of Dante's Inferno and of Hamlet. Pierre, Lucy Tartan, Mrs. Glendenning, and Isabel, are creations that could have come from no other source than Melville's mind. * * * It is clothed with language singularly wild, beautiful, and wonderful.--Phila. Evening Bulletin. 
and the New York Morning Courier on October 21, 1852.

Morning Courier and New-York Enquirer - October 21, 1852
via FultonHistory
As in the Louisville Journal, the October 1852 Harper ads misspell "Glendinning" as "Glendenning."

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