Step into the quiet, claustrophobic confines of a Wall Street law office and meet the most enigmatic refusenik in all of American literature, and read the complete story online for free.
Published in 1853, Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall-Street is Herman Melville’s great act of literary defiance. Six years after the catastrophic failure of his masterpiece Moby-Dick, Melville turned away from the vastness of the ocean and toward the suffocating narrowness of a legal copying office. He produced a story so strange, so modern, and so deliberately unheroic that it baffled his contemporary readers. Today, it is recognized as the gateway between the nineteenth century and the twentieth—the moment American literature stopped explaining and started wondering.
The story is simple. A successful, unnamed lawyer hires a new copyist to help manage his documents. The man, Bartleby, is initially a prodigy of productivity. Then, one day, when asked to proofread a document, he replies: “I would prefer not to.” He does not refuse. He does not rebel. He simply prefers not to. This quiet negation, repeated with mild, immovable persistence, unravels the lawyer, the office, and ultimately Bartleby himself. It is a story about work, about charity, about the limits of human connection, and about the terrifying power of saying no.
On this page, you can experience the story that inspired a thousand existentialists and outlasted the empire that dismissed it. We offer the complete 1853 tale for online reading.
Book Info
| Detail | Information |
|---|---|
| Title | Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall-Street |
| Author | Herman Melville |
| Year of Publication | 1853 |
| Genre | Short Story, Psychological Fiction, Existentialism |
| Language | English |
| Legal Status | Public Domain Worldwide |
| Format | Online Reading |
Read Bartleby, the Scrivener Online
Enter the hushed, hieroglyphic world of Wall Street copyists. Begin this landmark of American fiction by exploring the lawyer’s chambers interactively below.
This preview introduces the narrator, his eccentric employees Turkey and Nippers, and the pale, motionless figure who will change everything. However, the full, haunting narrative—the gradual paralysis of the office, the desperate attempts at charity, and the final, heartbreaking discovery—is available in the complete text for our subscribers.
A subscription unlocks this cornerstone of short fiction and the complete works of Herman Melville. Discover the story that refused to disappear.
About the Story Bartleby, the Scrivener
This is not a story about a plot. It is a story about a pause. Melville takes the rhythms of the mid-nineteenth-century workplace—the scratching of pens, the dictation of letters, the hierarchy of desks—and introduces a single, motionless figure who stops the music entirely.
“I Would Prefer Not To”
This seven-word sentence is perhaps the most famous act of passive resistance in literature. Bartleby does not refuse; refusal implies confrontation, agency, opposition. He prefers not to. It is a statement of taste, not rebellion. He does not demand anything. He does not explain himself. He simply states his preference and waits. The narrator, a man who has built his life on polite consensus and professional accommodation, has no framework for processing this. You cannot argue with a preference.
The Lawyer: The Real Protagonist
For all Bartleby’s fame, the narrator is the true subject of the story. He is a “safe” man, an unambitious man, a man who prides himself on his prudence and his Episcopal respectability. Bartleby is the test his comfortable life never prepared him for. He tries charity. He tries bribery. He tries religion. He tries avoidance. Each failure reveals a new limitation in his character. He is not a villain; he is a decent man confronted with a problem decency cannot solve. His final line—”Ah, Bartleby! Ah, humanity!”—is not wisdom. It is exhaustion.
The Office as Universe
Melville confines almost the entire story to a single room. The windows overlook a lightless airshaft. The walls are white. The only sounds are the scratch of pens and the occasional eruption from the volatile employees Turkey and Nippers. This is Wall Street as monastery, as prison, as tomb. Bartleby, we learn at the end, previously worked in the Dead Letter Office in Washington, sorting undelivered mail. He has spent years handling messages that arrived too late. No wonder he prefers not to.
Turkey and Nippers: The Comic Chorus
Melville leavens the existential dread with two of the most vivid minor characters in American fiction. Turkey is a capable copyist in the morning, but after his lunchtime ale becomes flushed, reckless, and blotting. Nippers is a dyspeptic young man whose ambition outstrips his station; he cannot keep his desk level. They are foils to Bartleby—employees with flaws that are predictable, manageable, human. Bartleby is the flaw without pattern.
A Story Ahead of Its Time
When Bartleby was published in Putnam’s Magazine, readers were confused. It was not romantic. It was not moralistic. It offered no redemption and no clear villain. It was republished in Melville’s collection The Piazza Tales to modest sales and then largely forgotten. It was the twentieth century—the century of Kafka, Camus, and Beckett—that recognized Melville had written the first existentialist text in American letters. Bartleby is not insane. He is not lazy. He has simply seen the machinery of life and declined to participate.
The Dead Letter Office
The story’s closing revelation is devastating. After Bartleby’s death, the narrator learns he once worked in the Dead Letter Office in Washington. “Dead letters! does it not sound like dead men?” Melville writes. “On errands of life, these letters speed to death.” Bartleby did not become a passive, silent figure despite his work; he became that way because of it. He spent years handling the words that never arrived, the hopes that were never realized, the lives that ended before connection could be made. His preference not to participate is not a choice. It is a diagnosis.
Why Read the Story Bartleby Today?
Every generation rediscovers Bartleby for its own reasons. In the 1960s, he was a protestor. In the 1990s, he was a depressive. Today, reading about a man who quietly, persistently declines to perform pointless labor in a deadening office environment feels less like literature and more like journalism. It is the perfect story for anyone who has ever looked at their inbox and felt, with perfect clarity, that they would prefer not to.
FAQ
Is this a novel or a short story?
Bartleby is a novella or a long short story, approximately 50 pages in standard editions. It is complete in one sitting, though its implications will linger much longer. This format makes it an ideal introduction to Melville for readers intimidated by the whale.
Is Bartleby based on a real person?
There is no direct evidence. However, Melville wrote the story during a period of profound professional despair. Moby-Dick had been savaged by critics and ignored by readers. He was supporting a large family on dwindling royalties, working a tedious customs inspector job. Many biographers see Bartleby as Melville’s portrait of the artist: preferring not to write the potboilers the public demanded, preferring not to explain himself, preferring simply to stop.
Do we ever learn why Bartleby refuses?
No. The story offers the Dead Letter Office as a possible explanation, but the narrator himself admits this is speculation. Bartleby never explains himself. This absence of motivation is the source of the story’s power and its frustration. We are left, like the lawyer, with only questions.
Is this story funny?
Yes, surprisingly. The first half of Bartleby is genuinely comic. Turkey’s afternoon explosions, Nippers’ writhing ambition, the lawyer’s increasingly desperate stratagems—Melville has a light touch. The humor curdles gradually, almost imperceptibly, into dread. By the end, you realize you have not laughed in several pages.
Can I read it on my phone?
Absolutely. It is the perfect length for a commute or a lunch break. Moreover, its themes of isolation, urban anonymity, and the absurdity of office life are amplified rather than diminished by reading on a glowing rectangle in a crowded public space.