Bartleby, le scribe

"Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street" is a short story by American writer Herman Melville, first serialized anonymously in two parts in the November and December 1853 issues of Putnam's Magazine and reprinted with minor textual alterations in his The Piazza Tales in 1856. In the story, a Wall Street lawyer hires a new clerk, who, after an initial bout of hard work, refuses to make copies or do any other task required of him, responding to any request with the words "I would prefer not to." The story takes place between 1848 (as it takes place after the death of John Jacob Astor) and 1853 (the year it was first published), during the antebellum period in American history. Numerous critical essays have been published about the story, which scholar Robert Milder describes as "unquestionably the masterpiece of the short fiction" in the Melville canon.