Bartleby, The Scrivener

Name: Bartleby, The Scrivener
Brand: Findaway
Availability: InStock
Rating: 4 (107 reviews)
Author: Herman Melville
ISBN: 9781937091477

Author: Herman Melville

Narrator: B.J. Harrison

Unabridged: 1 hr 37 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: B.J. Harrison

Published: 01/01/2010

Categories: Fiction, Classic

Synopsis

The life of a scrivener can be a dull one. After all, your entire occupation has to do with the hand-written copying of law documents. But when Bartleby arrives, he turns the office upside down with the enigmatic phrase: “I prefer not to.”

About Herman Melville

Herman Melville (1819–1891) was an American novelist, short-story writer, essayist, and poet who is often classified as part of dark romanticism. He is best known for his novel Moby Dick and novella Billy Budd, the latter which was published posthumously. His first three books gained much attention, the first becoming a bestseller, but after a fast-blooming literary success in the late 1840s, his popularity declined precipitously in the mid-1850s and never recovered during his lifetime. When he died, he was almost completely forgotten. It was not until the "Melville Revival" in the early twentieth century that his work won recognition, most notably Moby Dick, which was hailed as one of the chief literary masterpieces of both American and world literature.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Bill

What a pleasure it is to return to a work of genius and find it inexhaustible! What a host of insights, what a web of subtleties, are contained within this short account of the breakdown of one man in a five man office! I think of Melville the sailor, accustomed to wide sea vistas and many sea duties......more

Goodreads review by Riku

Ah, Bartleby. Ah, Humanity. At first, as I tried to contain my surprise that Melville, who awed me in Moby Dick, was now writing with such humour and lightness, I felt that Bartleby was a Heroic figure, someone to be admired and emulated - and a welcome break from the complicated characters of the do......more

Goodreads review by oyshik

Bartleby the Scrivener by Herman Melville I would prefer not to. In the story, a lawyer hired a clerk but he preferred not to do any work. Now the interesting part is how the lawyer would handle him. That's a magnificent story about sympathy and depression. The beauty of the book is the way it develo......more