Herman Melville (1819–1891) went to sea as a young man, turned his adventures into bestselling travel narratives, and then wrote Moby-Dick — which ended his popularity almost overnight. The masterpieces that followed were met with bafflement, and by the 1860s he was working as a customs inspector on the New York docks, his books out of print.
"Bartleby, the Scrivener," written in the bitter aftermath of Moby-Dick's failure, is his great short story: a Wall Street lawyer confounded by a copyist who simply "would prefer not to." It reads today as eerily modern — the first great story of the office, of passive resistance, of the limits of charity. Melville died forgotten; the twentieth century made him central.
