Publisher's Synopsis
My name is Arthur Gordon Pym. My father was a respectable trader in sea-stores atNantucket, where I was born. My maternal grandfather was an attorney in goodpractice. He was fortunate in everything, and had speculated very successfully instocks of the Edgarton New-Bank, as it was formerly called. By these and othermeans he had managed to lay by a tolerable sum of money. He was more attachedto myself, I believe, than to any other person in the world, and I expected to inheritthe most of his property at his death. He sent me, at six years of age, to the schoolof old Mr. Ricketts, a gentleman with only one arm, and of eccentric manners-he iswell known to almost every person who has visited New Bedford. I stayed at hisschool until I was sixteen, when I left him for Mr. E. Ronald's academy on the hill.Here I became intimate with the son of Mr. Barnard, a sea captain, who generallysailed in the employ of Lloyd and Vredenburgh-Mr. Barnard is also very wellknown in New Bedford, and has many relations, I am certain, in Edgarton.