  The abelian hierarchy of quantum Hall states accounts for most of the states
in the lowest Landau level, and there is evidence of a similar hierarchy of
non-abelian states emanating from the {\nu} = 5/2 Moore-Read state in the
second Landau level. Extending a recently developed formalism for hierarchical
quasihole condensation, we present a theory that allows for the explicit
construction of the ground state wave function, as well as its quasiparticle
excitations, for any state based on the abelian hierarchy. We relate our
construction to structures in rational conformal field theory and stress the
importance of using coherent state wave functions which allows us to formulate
an extension of the bulk - edge correspondence that was conjectured by Moore
and Read. Finally, we study the proposed ground state wave functions in the
limiting geometry of a thin torus and argue that they coincide with the known
exact results.
