1. Reviews of Moby-Dick can be found in Moby-Dick As Doubloon: Essays and Extracts (1851–1970), ed. Hershel Parker and Harrison Hayford (New York: Norton, 1970). The reviews of Pierre I am here alluding to (August 19 and 27, September 18, November 20, 1852) are quoted in Herman Melville: An Annotated Bibliography, 1846–1930, ed. Brian Higgins (Boston: G.K. Hall, 1979), pp. 120–6. For a detailed account of the sales of Pierre and Melville’s financial failure, see Hershel Parker’s second section of the “Historical Note” to the Northwestern-Newberry edition of Pierre, ed. Harrison Hayford, Hershel Parker, and Thomas G. Tanselle (Evanston and Chicago: Northwestern University Press and the Newberry Library, 1971), pp. 379–80 ff.
2. There has been much debate over authorial intentions in Pierre, as well as the question of Melville’s control during its composition. See, for example, Leon Howard’s and Hershel Parker’s section of the “Historical Note” to the Northwestern-Newberry edition (which also summarizes earlier controversies), pp. 365–407; Robert Milder, “Melville’s Intentions in Pierre”, Studies in the Novel, 6 (1974), pp. 186–99;
3. Hershel Parker, “Why Pierre Went Wrong”, Studies in the Novel, 8 (1976), pp. 7–23;
4. Hershel Parker, “Contract: Pierre by Herman Melville”, Proof, 5 (1977), pp. 27–44;
5. Hershel Parker, Flawed Texts and Verbal Icons: Literary Authority in American Fiction (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1984), pp. 28–30;