The Piazza Tales Av Herman Melville

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 Gal¿gos 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 <i>Moby Dick</i> at his most uncompromising and compelling.