View source for Bartleby, the Scrivener

{{Short description|Short story by Herman Melville}}
{{Redirect|Bartleby}}
{{Use mdy dates|date=June 2018}}
{{Infobox short story|
| name             = Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street
| image            =
| image_caption    =
| author           = [[Herman Melville]]
| country          = United States
| language         = English
| genre            = Short story <!-- or maybe: [[Absurdism]]<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/939597186|title=Genre-busting dark comedies of the 1970s: twelve American films|last=Gehring|first=Wes D.|isbn=9781476622514|location=Jefferson, North Carolina|oclc=939597186|quote=Melville's consummate short story is "Bartleby the Scrivener" (1853), now deemed a forerunner of absurdist literature.|page=163|chapter=''One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest'' (1975)}}</ref> ?-->
| published_in     = ''[[Putnam's Magazine]]''
| publication_type = Periodical
| pub_date         = November&ndash;December 1853
| pages            = 45
}}
"'''Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street'''" is a [[short story]] by the American writer [[Herman Melville]], first serialized anonymously in two parts in the November and December 1853 issues of ''[[Putnam's Magazine]]'' and reprinted with minor textual alterations in his ''[[The Piazza Tales]]'' in 1856. In the story, a [[Wall Street]] lawyer hires a new clerk who, after an initial bout of hard work, refuses to [[Copying|make copies]] or do any other task required of him, responding to any request with the words "I would prefer not to."
The story likely takes place between 1848 and 1853, during the [[Antebellum period|Antebellum Period]] in American history.
Numerous [[Literary criticism|critical essays]] have been published about the story, which scholar Robert Milder describes as "unquestionably the masterpiece of the short fiction" in the Melville canon.<ref>Milder, Robert. (1988). "Herman Melville." Emory Elliott (General Editor), ''Columbia Literary History of the United States''. New York: Columbia University Press. {{ISBN|0-231-05812-8}}, p. 439</ref>
== Plot ==
The narrator is an unnamed elderly lawyer who works with legal documents and has an office on [[Wall Street]] in New York. He already employs two [[scrivener]]s, Turkey and Nippers, to copy documents by hand, but an increase in business leads him to advertise for a third. He hires the forlorn-looking Bartleby in the hope that his calmness will soothe the other two, each of whom displays an irascible temperament during an opposite half of the day. An errand boy nicknamed Ginger Nut completes the staff.
At first, Bartleby produces a large volume of high-quality work, but one day, when asked to help proofread a document, Bartleby answers with what soon becomes his perpetual response to every request: "I would prefer not to." To the dismay of the narrator and the irritation of the other employees, Bartleby begins to perform fewer and fewer tasks and eventually none. He instead spends long periods of time staring out one of the office's windows at a brick wall. The narrator makes several attempts to reason with Bartleby or to learn something about him, but never has any success. When the narrator stops by the office one Sunday morning, he discovers that Bartleby is living there. He is saddened by the thought of the life the young man must lead.
Tension builds as business associates wonder why Bartleby is always present in the office yet does not appear to do any work. Sensing the threat to his reputation, but emotionally unable to evict Bartleby, the narrator moves his business to a different building. The new tenant of his old office comes to ask for help in removing Bartleby, and the narrator tells the man that he is not responsible for his former employee. A week or so after this, several other tenants of the narrator's former office building come to him with their landlord because Bartleby is still making a nuisance of himself; even though he has been put out of the office, he sits on the building stairs all day and sleeps in its doorway at night. The narrator agrees to visit Bartleby and attempts to reason with him. He suggests several jobs that Bartleby might try and even invites Bartleby to live with him until they figure out a better solution, but Bartleby declines these offers. The narrator leaves the building and flees the neighborhood for several days, in order not to be bothered by the landlord and tenants.
When the narrator returns to work, he learns that the landlord has called the police. The officers have arrested Bartleby and imprisoned him in [[the Tombs]] as a vagrant. He goes to visit Bartleby, who spurns him, and bribes a cook to make sure Bartleby gets enough food. The narrator returns a few days later to check on Bartleby and discovers him dead of [[starvation]], having preferred not to eat.
Months later, the narrator hears a rumor that Bartleby had once worked in a [[dead letter office]] and reflects on how this might have affected him. The story ends with the narrator saying, "Ah Bartleby! Ah humanity!"
== Composition ==
Melville's major source of inspiration for the story was an advertisement for a new book, ''The Lawyer's Story'', printed in the ''Tribune'' and the ''Times'' on February 18, 1853. The book, published anonymously later that year, was written by popular novelist James A. Maitland.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Bergmann |first=Johannes Dietrich |date=November 1975 |title=''"Bartleby" and'' The Lawyer's Story |journal=[[American Literature (journal)|American Literature]] |location=Durham, NC |volume=47 |issue=3 |pages=432–436 |issn=0002-9831 |doi=10.2307/2925343|jstor=2925343 }}</ref> This advertisement included the complete first chapter, which started: "In the summer of 1843, having an extraordinary quantity of deeds to copy, I engaged, temporarily, an extra copying clerk, who interested me considerably, in consequence of his modest, quiet, gentlemanly demeanor, and his intense application to his duties." Melville biographer [[Hershel Parker]] said nothing else in the chapter besides this "remarkably evocative sentence" was notable.<ref>Parker 2002: 150. (The opening sentence of the source is quoted there as well.)</ref> Critic Andrew Knighton said Melville may have been influenced by an obscure work from 1846, Robert Grant White's ''Law and Laziness: or, Students at Law of Leisure'', which features an idle scrivener,<ref>{{cite journal | last1 = Knighton | first1 = Andrew | year = 2007 | title = The Bartleby Industry and Bartleby's Idleness | journal = ESQ: A Journal of the American Renaissance | volume = 53 | issue = 2 | pages = 191–192 | doi = 10.1353/esq.0.0004 | s2cid = 161627160 }}</ref> while Christopher Sten suggests that Melville found inspiration in [[Ralph Waldo Emerson]]'s essays, particularly "[[The Transcendentalist]]", which shows parallels to "Bartleby".<ref>Christopher W. Sten, "Bartleby, the Transcendentalist: Melville's Dead Letter to Emerson." ''Modern Language Quarterly'' 35 (March 1974): 30–44.</ref>
Melville may have written the story as an emotional response to the bad reviews garnered by ''[[Pierre: or, The Ambiguities|Pierre]]'', his preceding novel.<ref>Daniel A. Wells, [http://web.ku.edu/~zeke/bartleby/wells.html ""Bartleby the Scrivener," Poe, and the Duyckinck Circle"] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070302215846/http://web.ku.edu/~zeke/bartleby/wells.html |date=March 2, 2007 }}, ''ESQ: A Journal of the American Renaissance'', 21 (First Quarter 1975): 35–39.</ref> Financial difficulties may also have played a part: ''[[Moby-Dick]]'' and ''Pierre'' sold so poorly that Melville was in debt to his publisher [[Harper (publisher)|Harper & Brothers]].<ref>{{cite book |last1=Machor |first1=James L. |editor1-last=Goldstein |editor1-first=Philip |editor2-last=Machor |editor2-first=James L. |title=New Directions in American Reception Study |date=2008 |publisher=Oxford University Press |location=Oxford (GB) |isbn=9780195320879 |page=88 |chapter=The American Reception of Melville's Short Fiction in the 1850s |quote=Why Melville turned to the short story form after working exclusively in the novel is difficult to say with any certainty. In all likelihood, economic necessity and his damaged reputation after ''Pierre'' were factors. Following the disappointing sales of ''Moby-Dick'', ''Pierre'' had sold a mere 283 copies by March 1853, causing Melville to make so little from the two novels that he was actually in debt to Harpers, his American publisher ... Melville needed to do something to address both problems, and when George P. Putnam invited him, as one of seventy authors, to contribute to the new monthly magazine Putnam was about to commence, an avenue opened.}}</ref>
== Publication history ==
The story was first published anonymously as "Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall-Street" in two installments in ''[[Putnam's Monthly Magazine]]'', in November and December 1853.<ref>Sealts (1987), 572.</ref> It was included in Melville's ''The Piazza Tales'', published by Dix & Edwards in the United States in May 1856 and in Britain in June.<ref>Sealts (1987), 497.</ref>
== Interpretation ==
The narrator and the text do not explicitly explain the reason for Bartleby's behavior, leaving it open to interpretation.
===Bartleby's demeanour===
A 1978 article in ''[[ELH]]'' posits that Bartleby shows classic symptoms of [[Major depressive disorder|depression]], such as his lack of motivation. He is a passive person, and good at the work he agrees to do. He refuses to divulge any personal information to the narrator. Bartleby's death is consistent with depression—having no motivation to survive, he refrains from eating until he dies.<ref>Robert E. Abrams, Bartleby's prolonged silences (mutism) and prolonged periods of standing and staring are also symptoms of catatonia, a syndrome associated with depressive illness [https://www.jstor.org/stable/2872648?seq=2 '"Bartleby" and the Fragile Pageantry of the Ego"], ELH, vol. 45, no. 3 (Autumn, 1978), pp. 488–500.</ref>
===Function of narrator===
Bartleby has been interpreted as a "psychological double" for the narrator that criticizes the "sterility, impersonality, and mechanical adjustments of the world which the lawyer inhabits."<ref name="Marcus">Mordecai Marcus, [http://web.ku.edu/~zeke/bartleby/marcus.html "Melville's Bartleby As a Psychological Double"], ''College English'' 23 (1962): 365–368. {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110107111254/http://web.ku.edu/~zeke/bartleby/marcus.html |date=January 7, 2011 }}</ref> Until the end of the story, Bartleby's background is unknown and may have sprung from the narrator's mind. The narrator screens off Bartleby in a corner, which has been interpreted as symbolizing "the lawyer's compartmentalization of the unconscious forces which Bartleby represents."<ref name="Marcus"/>
Psychoanalyst [[Christopher Bollas]] says the main focus of the story is the narrator, whose "willingness to tolerate [Bartleby's] work stoppage is what needs to be explained ... As the story proceeds, it becomes increasingly clear that the lawyer identifies with his clerk. To be sure, it is an ambivalent identification, but that only makes it all the more powerful."<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.laphamsquarterly.org/reconsiderations/pushing-paper.php?page=all |title=Pushing Paper – Lapham's Quarterly |publisher=Laphamsquarterly.org |access-date=September 4, 2012 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120529185606/http://www.laphamsquarterly.org/reconsiderations/pushing-paper.php?page=all |archive-date=May 29, 2012 }}</ref>
===Autobiography===
Scholars have long explored the possibility that Bartleby serves as an autobiographical portrait.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://interestingliterature.com/2022/05/herman-melville-bartleby-the-scrivener-summary-analysis/|title=A Summary and Analysis of Herman Melville's 'Bartleby, the Scrivener'|author=Oliver Tearle|date=May 2022}}</ref> [[Lawrence Buell (academic)|Lawrence Buell]] suggested that the scrivener may reflect Melville as disenchanted writer or artist,<ref>{{cite book|author=Lawrence Buell|title=Melville's Masks: Private and Public History in American Novels|publisher=[[University of Chicago Press]]|year=1987}}</ref> [[Leo Marx]] connected the story's theme of alienation with Melville's experiences and feelings of isolation,<ref>{{cite book |last=Marx |first=Leo |title=The Machine in the Garden: Technology and the Pastoral Ideal in America |publisher=Oxford University Press |year=2000}}</ref> and Giles Gunn posited that Melville's personal struggles and disillusionment with the literary world influenced his portrayal of Bartleby as a withdrawn and passive character.<ref>{{cite book |last=Gunn |first=Giles |title=The Culture of Criticism and the Criticism of Culture |publisher=Oxford University Press |year=1987}}</ref>
===Free will and ethics===
"Bartleby, the Scrivener" alludes to [[Jonathan Edwards (theologian)|Jonathan Edwards]]'s "Inquiry into the Freedom of the Will" and Jay Leyda, in his introduction to ''The Complete Stories of Herman Melville,'' comments on the similarities between Bartleby and ''[[The Doctrine of Philosophical Necessity Illustrated|The Doctrine of Philosophical Necessity]]'' by [[Joseph Priestley]]. Both Edwards and Priestley wrote about free will and [[determinism]]. Edwards states that free will requires the will to be isolated from the moment of decision, in which case Bartleby's isolation from the world would allow him to be completely free. He has the ability to do whatever he pleases. The reference to Priestley and Edwards in connection with determinism may suggest that Bartleby's exceptional exercise of his personal will, even though it leads to his death, spares him from an externally determined fate.<ref>Allan Moore Emery, [https://www.jstor.org/stable/2933500?seq=10 "The alternatives of Melville's "Bartleby"], ''Nineteenth-Century Fiction'', vol. 31, no. 2 (September 1976), pp. 170–187.</ref>
"Bartleby" is also seen as an inquiry into ethics. Critic [[John Matteson]] sees the story (and other Melville works) as explorations of the changing meaning of 19th-century "[[prudence]]." The story's narrator "struggles to decide whether his ethics will be governed by worldly prudence or Christian ''[[agape]]''."  He wants to be humane, as shown by his accommodations of the four staff and especially of Bartleby, but this conflicts with the newer, pragmatic and economically based notion of prudence supported by changing legal theory. The 1850 case ''[[Brown v. Kendall]]'', three years before the story's publication, was important in establishing the "[[reasonable man]]" standard in the United States, and emphasized the positive action required to avoid [[negligence]]. Bartleby's passivity has no place in a legal and economic system that increasingly sides with the "reasonable" and economically active individual. His fate, an innocent decline into unemployment, prison, and starvation, dramatizes the effect of the new prudence on the economically inactive members of society.<ref>{{cite journal |title='A New Race Has Sprung Up': Prudence, Social Consensus and the Law in 'Bartleby the Scrivener'|author=Matteson, John |url=https://muse.jhu.edu/journals/leviathan/summary/v010/10.1.matteson.html |year=2008 |journal=Leviathan |volume=10 |issue=1 |pages=25–49 |url-access=subscription |via=[[Project MUSE]] |doi=10.1111/j.1750-1849.2008.01259.x|s2cid=143452766 }}</ref>
== Reception ==
Though no great success at the time of publication, "Bartleby, the Scrivener" is now among the most noted of American short stories. [[Albert Camus]], in a personal letter to [[Liselotte Dieckmann]] published in ''The French Review'' in 1998, cites Melville as a key influence.<ref>{{cite journal|last=Jones|first=James F.|title=Camus on Kafka and Melville: an unpublished letter|journal=The French Review|date=March 1998|volume=71|issue=4|pages=645–650|jstor=398858}}</ref>
On November 5, 2019, the ''[[BBC News]]'' listed "Bartleby, the Scrivener" on its list of the [[BBC list of 100 'most inspiring' novels|100 most influential novels]].<ref name=Bbc2019-11-05/>
== Adaptations and references==
===Adaptations===
* The [[York Playhouse]] produced a one-act opera, ''Bartleby'', composed by [[William Flanagan (composer)|William Flanagan]] and [[James J. Hinton Jr.]] with a libretto by [[Edward Albee]], from January 1 to February 28, 1961.<ref>Stanley Hochman (ed.), "Albee, Edward", in [https://books.google.com/books?id=VGNJxj9qnEkC&pg=PA42 ''McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of World Drama: An International Reference Work in 5 Volumes''], 2nd. ed., New York: McGraw-Hill, 1984, vol. 2, p. 42.</ref>
* The first filmed adaptation was by the [[Encyclopædia Britannica]] Educational Corporation in 1969. It was adapted, produced, and directed by [[Larry Yust]] and starred [[James Westerfield]] and Patrick Campbell, with [[Barry Williams (actor)|Barry Williams]] of ''[[The Brady Bunch]]'' fame in a small role.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/media/139775/Bartleby-an-enigmatic-man-who-calmly-refuses-to-carry-out |title=Britannica Classic: Herman Melville's Bartleby the Scrivener – Britannica Online Encyclopedia |publisher=Britannica.com |access-date=September 4, 2012}}</ref> The story has been adapted for film four other times as  ''Bartleby'': in [[Bartleby (1970 film)|1970]], starring [[Paul Scofield]]; in France, in [[Bartleby (1976 film)|1976]], by [[Maurice Ronet]], starring [[Michel Lonsdale]]; in 1977, by Israel Horovitz and Michael B Styer for Maryland Center for Public Broadcasting, starring Nicholas Kepros, which was an entry in the 1978 Peabody Awards competition for television; and in [[Bartleby (2001 film)|2001]], by Jonathan Parker, starring [[Crispin Glover]] and [[David Paymer]].
* The BBC Radio 4 adaptation dramatised by Martyn Wade, directed by Cherry Cookson, and broadcast in 2004 stars Adrian Scarborough as Bartleby, [[Ian Holm]] as the Lawyer, David Collings as Turkey, and Jonathan Keeble as Nippers.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b007jx95|title=BBC Radio 4 Extra - Herman Melville - Bartleby the Scrivener |website=BBC}}</ref>
* In 2009, French author [[Daniel Pennac]] read the story on the stage of La Pépinière-Théâtre in Paris.<ref name="Lavoixdunord.fr">{{cite web |url=http://www.lavoixdunord.fr/Locales/Boulogne_sur_Mer/actualite/Secteur_Boulogne_sur_Mer/2010/03/09/article_le-spectacle-de-daniel-pennac-au-coeur-d.shtml |title=Le spectacle de Daniel Pennac au coeur d'un documentaire télévisuel vendredi soir – La Voix du Nord |publisher=Lavoixdunord.fr |access-date=September 4, 2012 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120403041855/http://www.lavoixdunord.fr/Locales/Boulogne_sur_Mer/actualite/Secteur_Boulogne_sur_Mer/2010/03/09/article_le-spectacle-de-daniel-pennac-au-coeur-d.shtml |archive-date=April 3, 2012 }}</ref>
* The story was adapted for the stage in 2020 by [[Juhan Ulfsak]] for [[Von Krahl Theatre]] in [[Estonia]] as ''Pigem ei'' (literal translation: "''Rather not''").<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.vonkrahl.ee/lavastus/pigem-ei|title=Pigem ei|website=Von Krahl|access-date=October 16, 2022}}</ref>
=== References to the story ===
==== Literature ====
* ''Bartleby: La formula della creazione'' (1993) by [[Giorgio Agamben]] and ''Bartleby, ou la formule'' by [[Gilles Deleuze]] are two philosophical essays reconsidering many of Melville's ideas.
* [[Abdulrazak Gurnah]] references ''Bartleby, the Scrivener'' throughout his 2001 novel ''[[By the Sea (novel)|By the Sea]].'' The protagonist Saleh Omar quotes Bartleby's mantra to explain his decision to abstain from speaking English on seeking asylum in the UK.
* [[Jeff Smith (cartoonist)|Jeff Smith]]'s comic book series ''[[Bone (comics)|Bone]]'' features a "rat creature" named Bartleby who declines to partake in the violence and savagery of his feral brethren. The Melville connection is reinforced by the fact that ''[[Moby Dick]]'' is the series protagonist's favorite novel.
==== Film and television ====
* ''[[Bartleby (1970 film)]]'' is an adaptation of the story.
* In 2001, [[Crispin Glover]] starred in a modernized adaptation, ''[[Bartleby (2001 film)|Bartleby]]''.<ref>{{cite web | url=https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0230025/ | title=Bartleby | website=[[IMDb]] }}</ref>
* In 2011, French director [[Jérémie Carboni]] made the documentary ''[[Bartleby en coulisses]]'' around Daniel Pennac's reading of "Bartleby the Scrivener".<ref name="Lavoixdunord.fr"/>
* In 2018, [[Miles Luna]], one of the lead creators of and a writer for ''[[RWBY]]'', revealed that the creatures called ''Apathy'' that appeared in the episode ''Alone in the Woods'' of ''Volume 6'' were inspired by Bartleby's apathetic behavior in the story.<ref>{{Cite tweet |number=1071457443518050305 |user=TheMilesLuna |title=Batrleby was one half of the inspiration for The Apathy (and checked our fairy tale/legend/short story box for RWBY) . The other half was actually much more modern; It was an idea from the 2005 film, Serenity. |first=Miles Antony |last=Luna |access-date=2024-09-28}}</ref> Additionally, the writer of a series of diaries in the episode is named Bartleby.
==== Other ====
*The electronic text archive [[Bartleby.com]] is named "after the humble character of its namesake scrivener, or copyist—publishes the classics of literature, nonfiction, and reference free of charge."<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.bartleby.com/sv/welcome.html|title=Welcome to Bartleby.com|website=www.bartleby.com|access-date=March 5, 2018}}</ref>
*The British newspaper magazine ''[[The Economist]]'' maintains a column named ''Bartleby'' focused on managers trying to understand how to motivate their employees and to empathize with employees who "carry out their bosses' often bewildering orders, even when they would 'prefer not to'."<ref>{{cite news | url=https://www.economist.com/business/2018/05/26/introducing-bartleby-our-new-column-on-management-and-work | title=Introducing Bartleby, our new column on management and work | newspaper=The Economist }}</ref>
*The [[92nd Street Y]] presented a livestreamed and on-demand reading of the story by actor [[Paul Giamatti]] in November 2020. A December 3, 2020 conversation between Giamatti and Andrew Delbanco is archived on YouTube.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbDDIbI9BtA&feature=emb_logo |title=Paul Giamatti in Conversation with Andrew Delbanco |via=YouTube |date=2020-12-04}}</ref>
==See also==
* [[Interpassivity]]
* [[Pseudowork]]
* [[Refusal of work]]
* [[Slacker]]
== References ==
{{Reflist|30em|refs=<ref name=Bbc2019-11-05>
{{cite news
| url         = https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-50302788
| title       = 100 'most inspiring' novels revealed by BBC Arts
| work        = [[BBC News]]
| date        = 2019-11-05
| access-date  = 2019-11-10
| quote       = The reveal kickstarts the BBC's year-long celebration of literature.
}}
</ref>
}}
== Sources ==
* Jaffé, David (1981). "''Bartleby the Scrivener'' and ''Bleak House'': Melville's Debt to Dickens". Arlington, Virginia: The Mardi Press.
* McCall, Dan (1989). ''The Silence of Bartleby''. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press. {{ISBN|0-8014-9593-8}}
* [[Hershel Parker|Parker, Hershel]] (2002). ''Herman Melville: A Biography''. Volume 2, 1851–1891. Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press. {{ISBN|0801868920}}
* [[Merton M. Sealts Jr.|Sealts, Merton M., Jr.]] (1987). "Historical Note" Herman Melville, [https://books.google.com/books?id=SN1fGPgKweYC&dq=melville+piazza+tales+prose+pieces&pg=PA542 ''The Piazza Tales and Other Prose Pieces 1839-1860''.] Edited by Harrison Hayford, Alma A. MacDougall, and [[G. Thomas Tanselle]]. Evanston and Chicago: Northwestern University Press and The Newberry Library 1987.{{ISBN|0-8101-0550-0}}
* {{citation | last1= | first1=  | title=''A Study Guide for Herman Melville's Bartleby the Scrivener'' | chapter= Introduction| year=2015 | publisher=[[Gale (publisher)|Gale]]| isbn=978-1410337016| chapter-url =https://books.google.com/books?id=aWGqCgAAQBAJ&dq=Bartleby%2C+the+Scrivener&pg=PT8 }}
* {{citation | last1= | first1=  | title=''A Study Guide for Herman Melville's Bartleby the Scrivener'' | chapter= Plot summary| year=2015 | publisher=[[Gale (publisher)|Gale]]| isbn=978-1410337016| chapter-url =https://books.google.com/books?id=aWGqCgAAQBAJ&dq=Bartleby%2C+the+Scrivener&pg=PT8 }}
== External links ==
{{Wikisource|Bartleby the Scrivener}}
* {{StandardEbooks|Standard Ebooks URL=https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/herman-melville/short-fiction|Display Name=An omnibus collection of Melville's short fiction|noitalics=true}}
* {{gutenberg|no=11231|name=Bartleby, the Scrivener}}
* [https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=msu.31293105850832&view=1up&seq=558 Bartleby, the Scrivener (Part I: Nov 1853)] + [https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=msu.31293105850832&view=1up&seq=621 (Part II: Dec 1853)]. Digital facsimile of first edition published in ''[[Putnam's Magazine]]''. From the HathiTrust Digital Library.
* {{librivox book | dtitle=Bartelby, the Scrivener | stitle=Bartleby | author=Herman Melville}}
{{Herman Melville|state=collapsed}}
{{Bartleby the Scrivener}}
{{Authority control}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bartleby, The Scrivener}}
[[Category:1853 short stories]]
[[Category:Fictional scribes]]
[[Category:Short stories by Herman Melville]]
[[Category:Works originally published in Putnam's Magazine]]
[[Category:Bureaucracy in fiction]]
[[Category:Short stories adapted into films]]
[[Category:Literature critical of work and the work ethic]]
[[Category:Manhattan in fiction]]
[[Category:Short stories about law]]
[[Category:Starvation]]