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Herman Melville’s tale of corporate discontent, Bartleby, the Scrivener, tells the story of a quiet, hardworking legal copyist who works in an office in the Wall Street area of New York City. The business where he works handles the official financial paperwork of wealthy men. One day, Bartleby’s employer requests he proofread one of the documents he has copied. Bartleby declines the assignment with the inscrutable “I would prefer not,” the first of what will become many refusals.

The life of a Scrivener can be a dull one. After all, your entire occupation has to do with the handwritten copying of law documents. But when Bartleby arrives, he turns the office upside down with the enigmatic phrase: “I prefer not to.”

A quiet unassuming scrivener is hired by a successful Wall Street law firm, but his strange demeanor is an unwelcome presence.

Bartleby, The Scrivener by Herman Melville is a profound and haunting tale that explores themes of isolation, free will, and the dehumanizing effects of modern work. The story is narrated by a Wall Street lawyer who hires a quiet and enigmatic scrivener named Bartleby. Initially diligent, Bartleby soon begins to refuse his tasks with the simple yet unsettling phrase, “I would prefer not to.” As his passive resistance escalates, his employer struggles to understand the man’s mysterious behavior, leading to a meditation on society’s treatment of those who refuse to conform.

Herman Melville was born in New York City on 1st August 1819. His father died when he was 12, leaving the family in very straitened times. Two years later Melville took a job in a bank and followed up with a failed stint as a surveyor. He went to sea and travelled across to Liverpool and then to the Pacific on adventures. Presented here is perhaps his best known short story, ‘Bartleby, the Scrivener’, an enduring story of a Wall Street lawyer and his very particular assistant.

With the same vigor he brought to examining man's relationship with nature (and himself) in Moby Dick, Herman Melville turns inward in this deeply textured novella of an unknowable soul, his effect on those who encounter him, and how little we really understand about our fellow creatures. Melville's deft touch in dialogue and description evoke a Wall Street of another age, but lay bare ageless and difficult truths about being. To hear this timeless tale, and to return to it, is to be enriched and prodded at the same time.

"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.

The tale is one of the final works of fiction published by Melville before, slipping into despair over the continuing critical dismissal of his work after Moby-Dick, he abandoned publishing fiction. The work is presented here exactly as it was originally published in Putnam's magazine to, sadly, critical disdain.

Herman Melville is now seen as one of the great figures in American literature, a man who expanded the role of the novel and gave new and complex depths to the meaning of a story. His best work uses the form of the novel or the story as a means of carrying and discussing concerns about the nature of humanity, the role of God, and a sometimes satiric, sometimes bitter, examination of colonialism and capitalism.

The narrator, an elderly, unnamed Manhattan lawyer, already employs two scriveners to copy legal documents by hand. An increase in business leads him to hire a third: the forlorn-looking Bartleby. At first, Bartleby produces a large volume of high-quality work. But one day, when asked to proofread, Bartleby answers with what soon becomes his perpetual response to every request: "I would prefer not to."

"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. A Wall Street lawyer hires a new clerk who, after an initial bout of hard work, refuses to make copy and any other task required of him, with the words "I would prefer not to".

In Manhattan, an elderly lawyer's business is growing. Having two scriveners in his employ, the lawyer advertises for a third to meet demand. Enter Bartleby, a glum albeit quality scrivener. However, the lawyer quickly discovers that something is off with his new employee. When asked to perform any duties outside of writing, Bartleby responds with a canned "I would prefer not to." Soon Bartleby is living at the office and performing less and less at work.

In the spring of 1841, a lonely worker in Washington's Dead Letter Office encounters a package that prompts him to quit his job and travel into the western wilderness in search of a woman he’s never met, to claim land he doesn’t own, using a name that isn’t his. There he discovers danger and opportunity, the beauty and corruption of the frontier, and the darkness of his own heart. Striving for redemption, he encounters Indian agents and displaced tribes, escaping slaves, and new immigrants come, like him, to find their fortunes in the promised land of America. From the debauchery of ...

Bartleby is one of the final works of fiction published by Herman Melville before he slipped into despair over the continuing critical dismissal of his work after Moby Dick. Set in the mid-19th century on New York City's Wall Street, Bartleby is often thought of as Melville's most prescient story: what if a young man caught up in the rat race of commerce decides they have had enough, and chooses to live a different kind of life?

This classic story of a New York lawyer and his oddly rebellious clerk is as relevant today as when it was first published in 1853. Herman Melville brings us into a small Wall Street law office and introduces us to the lawyer and his quirky staff, the quirkiest of whom is poor, quiet Bartleby, whose increasing refusals to participate in office procedures lead to increasingly bewildering and tragic consequences.

"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.

One of Melville's most well-known short stories which centres on an employee of a Wall Street law firm who "would prefer not to".

"Bartleby the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street" is a short story by Herman Melville. The story first appeared, anonymously, in Putnam's Magazine in two parts. The first part appeared in November 1853, with the conclusion published in December 1853. It was reprinted in Melville's The Piazza Tales in 1856 with minor textual alterations. The work is said to have been inspired, in part, by Melville's reading of Emerson, and some have pointed to specific parallels to Emerson's essay, "The Transcendentalist."View our full collection of podcasts at our website: https://www.solgoodmedia.com or ...

"Bartleby the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street" is a short story by Herman Melville. The story first appeared, anonymously, in Putnam's Magazine in two parts. The first part appeared in November 1853, with the conclusion published in December 1853. It was reprinted in Melville's The Piazza Tales in 1856 with minor textual alterations. The work is said to have been inspired, in part, by Melville's reading of Emerson, and some have pointed to specific parallels to Emerson's essay, "The Transcendentalist." The story has been adapted twice: once in 1970, starring Paul Scofield, and again in 2001,...

“Literary Legend” (New York) Gay Talese retraces his pioneering career, marked by his fascination with the world's hidden characters. In the concluding act of this ""incomparable"" (Air Mail) capstone book, Talese introduces readers to one final unforgettable story: the strange and riveting...