“Bartleby the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street” is a short story by Herman Melville. The story first appeared, anonymously, in Putnam’s Magazine in two parts. The work is said to have been inspired, in part, by Melville’s reading of Emerson, and some have pointed to specific parallels to...

The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade was the last major novel by Herman Melville, the American writer and author of Moby-Dick. The Confidence-Man was Melville's tenth major work in eleven years. The novel portrays a Canterbury Tales-style group of steamboat passengers whose interlocking stories...

Melville wrote of some of his earliest experiences at sea in the story of Wellingborough Redburn, a wet-behind-the-ears youngster whose head was filled with dreams of foreign travel and adventure. In Redburn, the protagonist enlists for a stint as a seaman aboard Highlander, a merchant ship...

The Piazza: In The Piazza, the narrator lives in a country house without a piazza, or porch. He has one built and selected the northern side of his house, much to his neighbors' amusement. He thereafter spends much time sitting on the piazza and gazing at the magnificent view of forested...