Bartleby, the Scrivener

Written by Herman Melville

Narrated by Michael Goodrick

"Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street" is a short story by the American writer Herman Melville, first serialized anonymously in two parts in the November and December 1853 issues of Putnam's Magazine, and reprinted with minor textual alterations in his The Piazza Tales in 1856.
In the story, a Wall Street lawyer hires a new clerk who, after an initial bout of hard work, refuses to make copies or do any other task required of him, with the words, "I would prefer not to".
The narrator is an elderly, unnamed Manhattan lawyer with a comfortable business in legal documents. He already employs two scriveners, Nippers and Turkey, to copy legal documents by hand, but an increase in business leads him to advertise for a third. He hires the forlorn-looking Bartleby in the hope that his calmness will soothe the irascible temperaments of the other two...
Among the most significant works Herman Melville -
"Bartleby: La formula della creazione" (1993) of Giorgio Agamben and "Bartleby, ou la formule by Gilles Deleuze" are two important philosophical essays reconsidering many of Melville's ideas, "A Peep at Polynesian Life", "А Narrative of Adventures in the South Seas", "Mardi: And a Voyage Thither", "Redburn: His First Voyage", "White-Jacket; or, The World in a Man-of-War", "Moby-Dick; or, The Whale", "Pierre: or, The Ambiguities", "Isle of the Cross", "Bartleby, the Scrivener", The Encantadas, or Enchanted Isles", "Benito Cereno", "Israel Potter: His Fifty Years of Exile".

• Language: English
• Publisher: Strelbytskyy Multimedia Publishing
• Release date: Jun 22, 2021
• ISBN: 9780880004848

Herman Melville

Herman Melville (1819-1891) was an American novelist, poet, and short story writer. Following a period of financial trouble, the Melville family moved from New York City to Albany, where Allan, Herman’s father, entered the fur business. When Allan died in 1832, the family struggled to make ends meet, and Herman and his brothers were forced to leave school in order to work. A small inheritance enabled Herman to enroll in school from 1835 to 1837, during which time he studied Latin and Shakespeare. The Panic of 1837 initiated another period of financial struggle for the Melvilles, who were forced to leave Albany. After publishing several essays in 1838, Melville went to sea on a merchant ship in 1839 before enlisting on a whaling voyage in 1840. In July 1842, Melville and a friend jumped ship at the Marquesas Islands, an experience the author would fictionalize in his first novel, Typee (1845). He returned home in 1844 to embark on a career as a writer, finding success as a novelist with the semi-autobiographical novels Typee and Omoo (1847), befriending and earning the admiration of Nathaniel Hawthorne and Oliver Wendell Holmes, and publishing his masterpiece Moby-Dick in 1851. Despite his early success as a novelist and writer of such short stories as “Bartleby, the Scrivener” and “Benito Cereno,” Melville struggled from the 1850s onward, turning to public lecturing and eventually settling into a career as a customs inspector in New York City. Towards the end of his life, Melville’s reputation as a writer had faded immensely, and most of his work remained out of print until critical reappraisal in the early twentieth century recognized him as one of America’s finest writers.