Arthur Gordon Pym and Augustus Barnard from the island of Nantucket are best friends, determined to become sailors, and ready for an adventure of their lifetime. Augustus smuggles Pym and Tiger, Pym's faithful dog, on a whaling vessel commanded by Augustus's father that is bound for the southern seas, and their great adventure starts. They will soon have to deal with mutiny, shipwreck, and many other various adventures and misadventures on the way to their final goal – the South Pole. Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) was an American writer, editor, and literary critic, best known for his poetry and short stories of mystery and the macabre. He is widely regarded as a central figure of Romanticism in the United States and American literature as a whole, and he was one of the country's earliest practitioners of the short story.