Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall-Street

"Bartleby, the Scrivener" originally appeared as a two-part serial in the November and December 1853 issues of Putnam's Monthly Magazine. It was later included in a collection of short stories by Melville entitled The Piazza Tales in 1856. This edition has been prepared from the original magazine text. The work is said to have been inspired, in part, by Melville's reading of Ralph Waldo Emerson, and some have pointed to specific parallels to Emerson's essay, "The Transcendentalist" (included in this volume, beginning on page 43).