Story of the Week

Herman Melville (1819–1891) left school as a teenager when his family declared bankruptcy, and he worked at several jobs, including crewing on whaling ships. He enjoyed initial literary success with his first two novels, Typee: A Peep at Polynesian Life and Omoo: A Narrative of Adventures in the South Seas, but ironically, Moby-Dick, for which he had high hopes, was poorly received, setting off a decline in his popularity until the rediscovery of his writing in the early twentieth century. Melville’s body of work includes ten novels; dozens of short stories, most notably “Bartleby, the Scrivener” and “Benito Cereno”; and several books of poetry and journals.

Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall-Street

A Story

by Herman Melville

I am a rather elderly man. The nature of my avocations for the last thirty years has brought me into more than ordinary contact with what would seem an interesting and somewhat singular set of men, of whom as yet nothing that I know of has ever been written:—I mean the law-copyists or scriveners. I have known very many of them, professionally and privately, and if I pleased, could relate divers histories, at which good-natured gentlemen might smile, and sentimental souls might weep. But I waive the biographies of all other scriveners for a few passages in the life of Bartleby, who was a scrivener the strangest I ever saw or heard of. While of other law-copyists I might write the complete life, of Bartleby nothing of that sort can be done. I believe that no materials exist for a full and satisfactory biography of this man. It is an irreparable loss to literature. Bartleby was one of those beings of whom nothing is ascertainable, except from the original sources, and in his case those are very small. What my own astonished eyes saw of Bartleby, that is all I know of him, except, indeed, one vague report which will appear in the sequel.

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