Moby-Dick received a perceptive though frequently negative review in the Richmond, Virginia Watchman and Observer (December 11, 1851), a Presbyterian weekly newspaper conducted by the Reverend Benjamin Gildersleeve.
A similarly guarded but nonetheless insightful response to Melville's next book, Pierre; Or, The Ambiguities appeared in the Richmond Watchman and Observer on August 19, 1852. This item is not collected in Herman Melville: The Contemporary Reviews, edited by Brian Higgins and Hershel Parker (Cambridge University Press, 1995; paperback 2009). Found on genealogybank.com and accessible also via the Virginia Chronicle Digital Newspaper Archive.
A similarly guarded but nonetheless insightful response to Melville's next book, Pierre; Or, The Ambiguities appeared in the Richmond Watchman and Observer on August 19, 1852. This item is not collected in Herman Melville: The Contemporary Reviews, edited by Brian Higgins and Hershel Parker (Cambridge University Press, 1995; paperback 2009). Found on genealogybank.com and accessible also via the Virginia Chronicle Digital Newspaper Archive.
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| Richmond Watchman and Observer - August 19, 1852 via genealogybank.com |
PIERRE, OR THE AMBIGUITIES—by Herman Melville. New York. Harper & Brothers. 1852. 12 Nos., pp. 495. Through Nash & Woodhouse.
If Mr. Melville had called his work the Ambiguities, it would have more nearly expressed our estimate of its character. It has the same cloudy, obscure aiming at something in the mist, and yet that mist often sunlit with crimson and gold, that characterises some of his recent works. There is a heated and unhealthy atmosphere pervading the book, that stifles and fevers the mind, and leaves an unpleasant impression upon it, even when there is nothing specially objectionable on which we can lay our fingers. On the whole, the book has made on us an unfavorable impression, in spite of the occasional passages of surpassing beauty that it contains, which have a dreamy loveliness that is peculiar to the pen of that strange child of genius.
Related post
- MOBY-DICK reviewed in Richmond Watchman and Observer
https://melvilliana.blogspot.com/2025/02/moby-dick-reviewed-in-richmond-virginia.html
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