SOURCE: " 'Bartleby' as Paradigm," in The Method of Melville's Short Fiction, Duke University Press, 1975, pp. 26-44.

Bickley is an American educator and critic with a special interest in the work of Herman Melville and Joel Chandler Harris. In the following excerpt, he provides an overview of "Bartleby, the Scrivener, " noting the influence of Washington Irving and Nathaniel Hawthorne on the story's style, structure, and themes.

Technique and biography cannot be kept entirely separate in examining "Bartleby, the Scrivener. A Story of Wall-Street" (Putnam's, Nov., Dec. 1853); Melville's shift to magazine-writing, however his earlier work may have prepared him for it, was largely precipitated by circumstances. Moby-Dick and Pierre had not done well, and Melville seemed to lack the psychic and aesthetic energy to write another novel. . . . In October [1852] he was invited to contribute to Putnam's new magazine, and the possibility of earning income by the page seemed especially attractive...