The Piazza Tales : Annotated Edition by 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?pagos 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.
Binding: Paperback / softback