Product Review

This edition includes 10 illustrations. Herman Melville published his stories Bartleby and Benito Cereno in 1853 and 1855, respectively; both stories feature a man exhibiting odd behavior, though for very different reasons. Bartleby is the story of a copy clerk sinking into a quagmire of passivity to the dismay of his generous but dismayed employer; and Benito Cereno is the captain of a Spanish ship which is crewed by slaves and where not everything is apparently as it seems. While Melville is considered an epic storyteller thanks to his novel Moby Dick, these two short stories reveal the author’s mastery of that form, too.