Reprinted here from standard texts in a finely made, yet inexpensive new edition, these stories offer the general reader and students of Melville and American literature sterling examples of a literary giant at his story-telling best. The three stories are: Bartleby Benito Cerino Billy Budd.
Benito Cereno is the character after whom the story is named. He starts out as an excellent copyist, but when asked to examine his work for errors, he replies that he 'would prefer not to.'. A splendid parable of man's struggle against the forces of evil, the carefully developed and mysteriously guarded plot builds to a dramatic climax while revealing the horror and depravity of which man is capable. Three Stories Bartleby, Benito Cereno, Billy Budd by Herman Melville. Bartleby is a young man hired by the Lawyer to serve as a scrivener, or law- copyist. A strange, enigmatic man employed as a clerk in a legal office, Bartleby forces his employer to come to grips with the most basic questions of human responsibility, and haunts the latter's conscience, even after Bartleby's dismissal.īenito Cereno, considered one of Melville's best short stories, deals with a bloody slave revolt on a Spanish vessel. Two of the most admired of these - Bartleby and Benito Cereno - first appeared as magazine pieces and were then published in 1856 as part of a collection of short stories entitled The Piazza Tales.īartleby (also known as Bartleby the Scrivener) is an intriguing moral allegory set in the business world of mid-19th-century New York. Herman Melville towers among American writers not only for his powerful novels, but also for the stirring novellas and short stories that flowed from his pen.
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