Bartleby, the Scrivener

In Herman Melville’s short story of Wall Street, an elderly narrator turns from a long acquaintance with law-copyists to the strangest scrivener he has known: Bartleby. He has observed many men in the profession, but this account begins with an admission of how little he can establish about its central figure.

Before introducing Bartleby, the narrator sets out to describe his business, employees, chambers, and surroundings. His own guiding conviction—that the easiest way of life is the best—also enters the telling. Framed as a handful of remembered passages rather than a complete biography, the story approaches its subject through the limited knowledge and astonished observations of one witness.