The Piazza Tales

This volume, first published in 1856, includes three of the tales widely considered to be among Melville's masterpieces. In 'Bartleby, the Scrivener', a Wall Street lawyer hires a melancholy young clerk called Bartleby, whose sudden and mysterious refusal to work plunges the firm into disarray. 'Benito Cereno' is the account of a mutiny on a slave ship, based on the real-life journals of an American sea captain. 'The Encantadas, or Enchanted Isles' is a series of sketches about the Galápago...