SOURCE: “The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym and the Ideology of Slavery,” in ESQ: A Journal of the American Renaissance, Vol. 40, No. 3, 1994, pp. 219-50.

In the following essay, Worley explores Pym as a novel “singularly concerned with race” in the context of Poe's views on slavery, and contends that the narrative undermines its own pro-slavery subtext.

In September 1835, John C. Calhoun, with characteristic gentility, declined Thomas W. White's offer to write for the Southern Literary Messenger: “Tho’ I have not been a reader of the Literary Messenger, I am not a stranger to the reputation, which the work and its author have acquired; and I would with pleasure comply with your request to add my contribution to its contents, if the extent of my publick & private engagements, which fully occupy my time, did not forbid.”¹ White was unaware that although he lost the service of one great figure...