Bartleby, the Scrivener #56702

"Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street" (1853) is a short story by the American writer Herman Melville, first serialized anonymously in two parts in the November and December editions of "Putnam's Magazine", and reprinted with minor textual alterations in his "The Piazza Tales" in 1856. Numerous essays are published on what according to scholar Robert Milder "is unquestionably the masterpiece of the short fiction" in the Melville canon.