Herman Melville

A Summary and Analysis of Herman Melville’s ‘Bartleby, the Scrivener’

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By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

Of Herman Melville’s shorter works, ‘Bartleby, the Scrivener’ has remained the most popular and widely studied. Critics have disagreed over the story’s meaning, with this tale of one man who repeatedly asserts that he ‘would prefer not to’ carry out the orders of his employer inviting a raft of interpretations. Melville (1819-91) wrote ‘Bartleby, the Scrivener’ in 1853, and it was first published in Putnam’s Magazine later that year.

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Five Fascinating Facts about Herman Melville

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Five fun and interesting facts about Herman Melville, the author of Moby-Dick

1. Much of his mature work was a flop during his lifetime. Much of Melville’s later work – the majority of which is now his most highly regarded fiction – was neither critically nor commercially successful when it was first published. Between 1863 and 1887, an average of 23 copies of Moby-Dick – now his most widely read book – were sold each year. It now sells more copies each year than were sold in the entire nineteenth century and is acknowledged as a classic. (Of course, its influence can even be seen in the modern world of coffee and capitalism: the founders of the Starbucks chain took the name from a character in Melville’s novel.)

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