Piazza Tales

This volume, first published in 1856, includes three of the tales widely considered to be among Melville`s masterpieces. In `Bartleby, the Scrivener`, a Wall Street lawyer hires a melancholy young clerk called Bartleby, whose sudden and mysterious refusal to work plunges the firm into disarray. `Benito Cereno` is the account of a mutiny on a slave ship, based on the real-life journals of an American sea captain. `The Encantadas, or Enchanted Isles` is a series of sketches about the Galápagos Islands which was a huge success with the reading public and contains some of Melville`s most celebrated prose. Also included in this volume are `The Lightning-Rod Man`, `The Bell Tower` and a story written especially for the collection, `The Piazza`. Taken together, these tales, in their masterful use of irony and concision, display the author of Moby Dick at his most uncompromising and compelling.