Bartleby, the Scrivener

A Wall Street lawyer hires a pale, quiet copyist named Bartleby, who at first works tirelessly. Then one day, asked to check a document, Bartleby replies, 'I would prefer not to.' Soon he prefers not to do anything at all, and not to leave the office either, and the narrator's kindness, anger and guilt cannot move him.

First published in a magazine in 1853, this long short story is funny, sad and strange, and every generation reads it differently: as a story about office work, depression, protest or the limits of charity. It is a good way to discover Melville before tackling Moby-Dick.

Herman Melville (1819–1891) was born in New York to a family ruined when he was a boy. At twenty he went to sea, sailed on a whaler to the Pacific, deserted in the Marquesas Islands and turned the adventure into Typee, a bestseller that made him famous at twenty-seven.

His ambitions grew with each book, and Moby-Dick, published in 1851, was misunderstood and sold poorly. He spent nineteen years as a customs inspector on the New York docks, writing poems and the stories Bartleby, the Scrivener and Billy Budd, and died almost forgotten; he was rediscovered as a great writer in the 1920s.