Bartleby, the Scrivener

Publisher Marketing: "Melville was a born romancer. One cannot account for the success of his early romances by saying that in the Great South Sea he had found and worked a new field for romance, since evidently it was not his experience in the South Sea that had led him to romance, but the irresistible attraction that romance had over him that led him to the South Sea. He was able not only to feel but to interpret that charm, as it never had been interpreted before, as it never has been interpreted since." - Eulogy Editorial in the New York Times, 1891 The life and legacy of Herman Melville have taken on various incarnations in the nearly 200 years since he was born. When he died in 1891, Melville was remembered for his series of well-received works back in the mid-19th century, particularly his first novel Typee, a bestseller when it was initially published. But his death followed over four decades of general obscurity, which was noted in an editorial eulogy for Melville that appeared in the New York Times: "There has died and been buried in this city, during the current week, at an advanced age, a man who is so little known, even by name, to the generation now in the vigor of life that only one newspaper contained an obituary account of him, and this was but of three or four lines. Yet forty years ago the appearance of a new book by Herman Melville was esteemed a literary event, not only throughout his own country, but so far as the English-speaking race extended." Melville's name may have been almost completely forgotten during his own lifetime, but there was a "Melville Revival" in the early 20th century, thanks to Raymond Weaver's biography on him in 1921 and several works reviewing American literature in the years following. Bartleby, The Scrivener was first published in 1853, and it's still considered one of the finest American short stories. Review Citations: Publishers Weekly 01/27/2014 (EAN 9781624069376, Compact Disc) Audio File 06/01/2012 pg. 49 (EAN 9781455112609, Compact Disc) Contributor Bio:  Melville, Herman Herman Melville was an American novelist, poet, and lecturer best known for his classic novel Moby-Dick, as well as for his short fiction "Bartleby, the Scrivener," and the unfinished "Billy Budd, Sailor." Educated as a teacher and later as an engineer, Melville's writing was heavily influenced by his time aboard the whaling ship Acushnet, and his month-long captivity by Typee natives on Nuka Hiva island. Although Melville experienced success early in his writing career, public indifference to his masterpiece, Moby-Dick, resulted in waning attention, and his work was almost entirely disregarded by the time of this death in 1891. Melville's work experienced a revival in the early twentieth century, and he is now considered one of the pre-eminent American writers of his time. He is also one of the most-studied novelists, and was the first writer to be collected and published by the Library of America.