Bartleby the Scrivener (Tale Blazers) - Softcover

Melville, Herman

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0895986833 ISBN 13: 9780895986832

Publisher: Perfection Learning, 1980

Synopsis

At the period just preceding the advent of Bartleby, I had two persons as copyists in my employment, and a promising lad as an office-boy. First, Turkey; second, Nippers; third, Ginger Nut. These may seem names, the like of which are not usually found in the Directory. In truth they were nicknames, mutually conferred upon each other by my three clerks, and were deemed expressive of their respective persons or characters.

About this title

Review:

"I wanted them all, even those I'd already read."
--Ron Rosenbaum, The New York Observer

"Small wonders."
--Time Out London

"[F]irst-rate...astutely selected and attractively packaged...indisputably great works."
--Adam Begley, The New York Observer

"I've always been haunted by Bartleby, the proto-slacker. But it's the handsomely minimalist cover of the Melville House edition that gets me here, one of many in the small publisher's fine 'Art of the Novella' series."
--The New Yorker

"The Art of the Novella series is sort of an anti-Kindle. What these singular, distinctive titles celebrate is book-ness. They're slim enough to be portable but showy enough to be conspicuously consumed--tiny little objects that demand to be loved for the commodities they are."
--KQED (NPR San Francisco)

"Some like it short, and if you're one of them, Melville House, an independent publisher based in Brooklyn, has a line of books for you... elegant-looking paperback editions ...a good read in a small package."
--The Wall Street Journal

About the Author:

Herman Melville was an American novelist, poet, and writer of short stories. His contributions to the Western canon are the whaling novel Moby-Dick (1851); the short work Bartleby, the Scrivener (1853) about a clerk in a Wall Street office; the slave ship narrative Benito Cereno (1855); and Billy Budd, Sailor (1924). When asked which of the great American writers he most admired, Vladimir Nabokov replied: "When I was young I liked Poe, and I still love Melville, whom I did not read as a boy.”

About this edition

• Publisher: Perfection Learning
• Publication date: 1980
• ISBN 10: 0895986833
• ISBN 13: 9780895986832
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 81