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The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket (1838) is the only complete novel written by American writer Edgar Allan Poe. The work relates the tale of the young Arthur Gordon Pym, who stows away aboard a whaling ship called the Grampus. Various adventures and misadventures befall Pym, including shipwreck, mutiny, and cannibalism, before he is saved by the crew of the Jane Guy. Aboard this vessel, Pym and a sailor named Dirk Peters continue their adventures further south. Docking on land, they encounter hostile black-skinned natives before escaping back to the ocean. The novel ends abruptly as Pym and Peters continue towards the South Pole.

Difficulty in finding literary success early in his short story-writing career inspired Poe to pursue writing a longer work. A few serialized installments of The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket were first published in the Southern Literary Messenger, though never completed. The full novel was published in July 1838 in two volumes. Some critics responded negatively to the work for being too gruesome and for cribbing heavily from other works, while others praised its exciting adventures. Poe himself later called it a very silly book . Nevertheless, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket became an influential work, notably for Herman Melville and Jules Verne.

Arthur Gordon Pym was born on the island of Nantucket, famous for its fishing harbor and whaling. His best friend, Augustus Barnard, is the son of the captain of a whaling ship. One night, the two boys get drunk and decide, on Augustus's whim, to take advantage of the breeze and sail out on Pym's sailboat, the Ariel. But the breeze turns out to be the beginnings of a violent storm. The situation gets critical when Augustus passes out drunk, and the inexperienced Pym must take control of the dinghy. The Ariel finally capsizes in the storm, and Pym and Augustus are rescued at the last minute by the Penguin, a returning whaling ship. After they're safely back on land, they decide to keep this episode a secret from their parents.

Elements of the novel are often read as autobiographical. The novel begins with Arthur Gordon Pym, a name similar to Edgar Allan Poe, departing from Edgartown, Massachusetts on Martha's Vineyard. Interpreted this way, the protagonist is actually sailing away from himself, or his ego.[32] The middle name of Gordon , in replacing Poe's connection to the Allan family, was turned into a reference to George Gordon Byron,[34] a poet whom Poe deeply admired.[37] The scene where Pym disguises himself from his grandfather while noting that he intends to inherit wealth from him also indicates a desire for Poe to free himself from family obligation and, specifically, scorning the patrimony of his foster-father John Allan.[38]