The life of a scrivener is an existence resigned to the handwritten copying of law documents.

One day something clicks in Bartleby, and his simple reply to everything is, I prefer not to.

Herman Melville, today of the Classic Tales Podcast. Thank you for listening.

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Today's story was published anonymously in 1853. Melville was in a bit of financial straits at the time since his last two novels, Moby Dick and Pierre, didn't sell well at all.

Melville's major source of inspiration for the story was an advertisement for a new book, The Lawyer Story, by James A. Maitland.

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 Herschel Walker said nothing else in the chapter besides this

remarkably evocative sentence was notable. It's never directly addressed why Bartleby acts the way he does,

and the author has left it open to interpretation. Many critics posit that his behavior

is due to depression.

And now Bartleby the Scrivener by Herman Melville. I am a rather elderly man. The nature of my avocations for the last 30 years has brought me into more than ordinary contact with what

would seem an interesting and somewhat singular set of men, of whom, as yet nothing that

I know of has ever been written. I mean the law copyists or

scriveners. I have known very many of them professionally and privately and

...