Poe, who intended to present a realistic story, was inspired by several real-life accounts of sea voyages, and drew heavily from J. N. Reynolds and referenced the Hollow Earth theory.

Difficulty in finding literary success early in his short story-writing career inspired Poe to pursue writing a longer work.

Augustus finally sets Pym free, explaining the mysterious message, as well as his delay in retrieving his friend: a mutiny had erupted on the whaling ship.

They soon realize that the apparently cheerful sailor is, in fact, a corpse propped up in the ship's rigging, his "grin" a result of his partially decomposed skull moving as a seagull feeds upon it.

On the Jane Guy, Pym and Peters become part of the crew and join the ship on its expedition to hunt sea calves and seals for fur, and to explore the southern oceans.

Here the Jane Guy comes upon a mysterious island called Tsalal, inhabited by a tribe of black, apparently friendly natives led by a chief named Too-Wit.

Facing a shortage of food, they make a desperate run and steal a pirogue from the natives, narrowly escaping from the island and taking one of its inhabitants prisoner.

The editors then compare the shapes of the labyrinth and the wall marks noted by Pym to Arabian and Egyptian letters and hieroglyphs with meanings of "Shaded", "White", and "Region to the South".

[4] In 1843, Poe also praised Reynolds in a review of A Brief Account of the Discoveries and Results of the United States' Exploring Expedition printed in Graham's Magazine.

[28] Closer to the time Poe wrote his novel, he had sailed during his military career, the longest trip being from Boston to Charleston, South Carolina.

Scholar Scott Peeples wrote that it is "at once a mock nonfictional exploration narrative, adventure saga, bildungsroman, hoax, largely plagiarized travelogue, and spiritual allegory" and "one of the most elusive major texts of American literature.

The novel begins with Arthur Gordon Pym, a name similar to Edgar Allan Poe, departing from Edgartown, Massachusetts, on Martha's Vineyard.

[39] 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.

"[64] The response from Harper & Brothers inspired Poe to begin a long work and began writing The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket.

Its full subtitle was: Comprising the Details of Mutiny and Atrocious Butchery on Board the American Brig Grampus, on Her Way to the South Seas, in the Month of June, 1827.

With an Account of the Recapture of the Vessel by the Survivers; Their Shipwreck and Subsequent Horrible Sufferings from Famine; Their Deliverance by Means of the British Schooner Jane Guy; the Brief Cruise of this Latter Vessel in the Atlantic Ocean; Her Capture, and the Massacre of Her Crew Among a Group of Islands in the Eighty-Fourth Parallel of Southern Latitude; Together with the Incredible Adventures and Discoveries Still Farther South to Which That Distressing Calamity Gave Rise.

[72]The first overseas publication of The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket appeared only a few months later when it was printed in London without Poe's permission, although the final paragraph was omitted.

The reviewer considered it a literary hoax and called it an "impudent attempt at humbugging the public"[76] and regretted "Mr. Poe's name in connexion with such a mass of ignorance and effrontery".

A reviewer for the Metropolitan Magazine noted that, though the story was good as fiction, "when palmed upon the public as a true thing, it cannot appear in any other light than that of a bungling business—an impudent attempt at imposing on the credulity of the ignorant.

"[78] Nevertheless, some readers believed portions of Poe's novel were true, especially in England, and justified the absurdity of the book with an assumption that author Pym was exaggerating the truth.

[79] Publisher George Putnam later noted that "whole columns of these new 'discoveries', including the hieroglyphics (sic) found on the rocks, were copied by many of the English country papers as sober historical truth.

[81] He later included one of the species invented for the story in his dictionary of fantastical creatures, the Book of Imaginary Beings, in a chapter titled "an animal dreamt by Poe".

[87] In need of work, Poe accepted a job at the low salary of $10 per week as assistant editor for Burton's Gentleman's Magazine,[88] despite their negative review of his novel.

He also returned to his focus on short stories rather than longer works of prose; Poe's next published book after this, his only completed novel, was the collection Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque in 1840.

[89] Scholars, including Patrick F. Quinn and John J. McAleer, have noted parallels between Herman Melville's Moby-Dick and The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket and other Poe works.

Prince Amerigo in Henry James's novel The Golden Bowl (1904) recalled The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket: "He remembered to have read as a boy a wonderful tale by Allan Poe ... which was a thing to show, by the way, what imagination Americans could have: the story of the shipwrecked Gordon Pym, who ... found ... a thickness of white air ... of the color of milk or of snow."

[102] On May 5, 1974, author and journalist Arthur Koestler published a letter from reader Nigel Parker in The Sunday Times of a striking coincidence between a scene in Poe's novel and an actual event that happened decades later:[103] In 1884, the yacht Mignonette sank, with four men cast adrift.

In Paul Auster's City of Glass (1985), the lead character Quinn has a revelation that makes him think of the discovery of the strange hieroglyphs at the end of Poe's novel.

In a 1988 Young All-Stars comic book written by Roy and Dann Thomas, Arthur Gordon Pym is a 19th-century explorer who discovered the lost Arctic civilization of the alien Dyzan.

It is stated that the character of Arthur Pym stops telling the story of his trip before his journey to the South Pole, alluding to the ending of the original novel.