Other editions of book Bartleby and Benito Cereno

Herman Melville towers among American writers not only for his powerful novels, but also for the stirring novellas and short stories that flowed from his pen. Two of the most admired of these — "Bartleby" and "Benito Cereno" — first appeared as magazine pieces and were then published in 1856 as part of a collection of short stories entitled The Piazza Tales."Bartleby" (also known as "Bartleby the Scrivener") is an intriguing moral allegory set in the business world of mid-19th-century New York. A strange, enigmatic man employed as a clerk in a legal office, Bartleby forces his employer to come to grips with the most basic questions of human responsibility, and haunts the latter's conscience, even after Bartleby's dismissal."Benito Cereno," considered one of Melville's best short stories, deals with a bloody slave revolt on a Spanish vessel. A splendid parable of man's struggle against the forces of evil, the carefully developed and mysteriously guarded plot builds to a dramatic climax while revealing the horror and depravity of which man is capable.Reprinted here from standard texts in a finely made, yet inexpensive new edition, these stories offer the general reader and students of Melville and American literature sterling examples of a literary giant at his story-telling best.

In this collection readers will find two of Herman Melville’s most renowned shorter works, “Bartleby: The Scrivener”, and “Benito Cereno”. The first story, “Bartleby”, was first serialized in two issues of “Putnam’s Magazine” in November and December of 1853. It concerns the office of a Wall Street lawyer who due to an increase in business hires a third scrivener named Bartleby to copy legal documents by hand. At first Bartleby proves to be a very productive worker but one day begins acting rather strangely. When asked to proofread a document he replies “I would prefer not to”, an answer he begins repeating perpetually in regards to all the tasks put to him. What follows for Bartleby is a tragic decline into apathy. The second story, “Benito Cereno”, first appeared in “Putnam’s Monthly” over three installments in 1855. It is the story on Don Benito Cereno, the captain of a Spanish Slavery ship, and the revolt that happens aboard his ship. Together “Bartleby” and “Benito Cereno” are widely regarded as two of Melville’s finest compositions. This edition is printed on premium acid-free paper.

Herman Melville towers among American writers not only for his powerful novels, but also for the stirring novellas and short stories that flowed from his pen. Two of the most admired of these — "Bartleby" and "Benito Cereno" — first appeared as magazine pieces and were then published in 1856 as part of a collection of short stories entitled The Piazza Tales."Bartleby" (also known as "Bartleby the Scrivener") is an intriguing moral allegory set in the business world of mid-19th-century New York. A strange, enigmatic man employed as a clerk in a legal office, Bartleby forces his employer to come to grips with the most basic questions of human responsibility, and haunts the latter's conscience, even after Bartleby's dismissal."Benito Cereno," considered one of Melville's best short stories, deals with a bloody slave revolt on a Spanish vessel. A splendid parable of man's struggle against the forces of evil, the carefully developed and mysteriously guarded plot builds to a dramatic climax while revealing the horror and depravity of which man is capable.Reprinted here from standard texts in a finely made, yet inexpensive new edition, these stories offer the general reader and students of Melville and American literature sterling examples of a literary giant at his story-telling best.

This edition includes 10 illustrations. Herman Melville published his stories Bartleby and Benito Cereno in 1853 and 1855, respectively; both stories feature a man exhibiting odd behavior, though for very different reasons. Bartleby is the story of a copy clerk sinking into a quagmire of passivity to the dismay of his generous but dismayed employer; and Benito Cereno is the captain of a Spanish ship which is crewed by slaves and where not everything is apparently as it seems. While Melville is considered an epic storyteller thanks to his novel Moby Dick, these two short stories reveal the author’s mastery of that form, too.

In this collection readers will find two of Herman Melville’s most renowned shorter works, “Bartleby: The Scrivener”, and “Benito Cereno”. The first story, “Bartleby”, was first serialized in two issues of “Putnam’s Magazine” in November and December of 1853. It concerns the office of a Wall Street lawyer who due to an increase in business hires a third scrivener named Bartleby to copy legal documents by hand. At first Bartleby proves to be a very productive worker but one day begins acting rather strangely. When asked to proofread a document he replies “I would prefer not to”, an answer he begins repeating perpetually in regards to all the tasks put to him. What follows for Bartleby is a tragic decline into apathy. The second story, “Benito Cereno”, first appeared in “Putnam’s Monthly” over three installments in 1855. It is the story on Don Benito Cereno, the captain of a Spanish Slavery ship, and the revolt that happens aboard his ship. Together “Bartleby” and “Benito Cereno” are widely regarded as two of Melville’s finest compositions. This edition includes a biographical afterword.

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.

Herman Melville was born in New York on August 1,1819, and received his early education in that city. There he imbibed his first love of adventure, listening, as he says in ‘Redburn,’ while his father ‘of winter evenings, by the well-remembered sea-coal fire in old Greenwich Street, used to tell my brother and me of the monstrous waves at sea, mountain high, of the masts bending like twigs, and all about Havre and Liverpool.’ The death of his father in reduced circumstances necessitated the removal of his mother and the family of eight brothers and sisters to the village of Lansingburg, on the Hudson River. There Herman remained until 1835, when he attended the Albany Classical School for some months. Dr. Charles E. West, the well-known Brooklyn educator, was then in charge of the school, and remembers the lad’s deftness in English composition, and his struggles with mathematics. Herman’s roving disposition, and a desire to support himself independently of family assistance, soon led him to ship as cabin boy in a New York vessel bound for Liverpool. He made the voyage, visited London, and returned in the same ship. ‘Redburn: His First Voyage,’ published in 1849, is partly founded on the experiences of this trip, which was undertaken with the full consent of his relatives, and which seems to have satisfied his nautical ambition for a time. As told in the book, Melville met with more than the usual hardships of a sailor-boy’s first venture. It does not seem difficult in ‘Redburn’ to separate the author’s actual experiences from those invented by him, this being the case in some of his other writings. pronounced feature of Melville’s character was his unwillingness to speak of himself, his adventures, or his writings in conversation.