Showing results for "Bartleby, the Scrivener A Story of Wall Street" in Literature & Fiction

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.

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 copying, Bartleby responds with a canned "I would prefer not to." Soon Bartleby is living at the office and performing less and less at work.

"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,...

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.

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.