Bartleby, the Scrivener
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Narrated by:
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Christopher Ragland
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By:
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Herman Melville
‘I am a man who, from his youth upwards, has been filled with a profound conviction that the easiest way of life is the best.’
A masterpiece of short fiction, Bartleby, the Scrivener is a quirky yet sobering damnation of the dehumanisation of modern working life.
Initially serialised anonymously in 1853, Melville’s short story centres around Bartleby – a newly hired scribe who begins work for an elderly lawyer on Wall Street in New York. After a bout of hard work, the quiet and peculiar Bartleby soon begins to refuse working tasks with the phrase, ‘I would prefer not to.’ Despite the lawyer’s attempts to understand and accommodate his new worker, Bartleby is left more withdrawn and stubborn than ever – much to his own misfortune. This audiobook edition is brilliantly read by Christopher Ragland.
Herman Melville (1819 – 1891) was a novelist and poet of the American Renaissance, best known for his works in adventure and travel writing, including Mody Dick (1851) and Typee (1846). His writing was met with mixed reviews by his contemporaries; it wasn’t until the early twentieth century that he gained recognition for his literary genius.