Bartleby and Benito Cereno

This volume collects two of Melville s most memorable and celebrated short fiction pieces, Bartleby, the Scrivener and Benito Cereno. A short story that largely reflected Melville s own frustrations as a writer, Bartleby, the Scrivener tells the story of a Manhattan-based clerk and copyist who is driven by depression and self-determination to renounce the writing assignments and expectations demanded of him by his superiors. Benito Cereno, on the other hand, is a harrowing novella that revolves around a slave rebellion aboard a Spanish merchant ship and the utter depravity of the circumstances preceding it. Both works of extraordinary literary significance, they continue to showcase Melville at the peak of his creativity.