40 Fun Facts About Bartleby, the Scrivener

Which polite reply does Bartleby give whenever the Wall Street lawyer asks him to do a task?

That he would prefer not to is Bartleby's mild answer as he gives up one duty after another, and the gentleness of it leaves his employer too baffled to dismiss him.

Where is Bartleby rumoured to have clerked until a change of administration cost him the job?

Dead Letter Office clerks sorted mail that could never be delivered, and the lawyer wonders whether feeding those hopeless messages to the flames by the cartload deepened Bartleby's despair.

Which New York jail is Bartleby taken to after he refuses to leave the lawyer's old building?

The Tombs was the popular nickname of Manhattan's Halls of Justice, built in 1838; in its yard Bartleby keeps his face to a high wall and tells the visiting lawyer he has nothing to say to him.

What kills Bartleby in the prison yard, days after the lawyer's first visit there?

Starvation ends Bartleby's life because he will not dine, even though the lawyer has slipped silver to the prison's grub-man to bring him the best dinners available.

What does Bartleby spend hours staring at through the window beside his desk in the lawyer's New York office?

A brick wall stands three feet from Bartleby's panes, a blank view that suits a tale Melville subtitled A Story of Wall-Street.

What was the daily work of a scrivener such as Bartleby in a New York law office of the 1850s?

Hand-copying documents was how deeds and mortgages were duplicated in Bartleby's day, and the lawyer pays his copyists four cents for every hundred words.

The murderer the lawyer recalls when furious with Bartleby was the brother of which famous gunmaker?

Samuel Colt's brother John killed a printer with a hatchet during a quarrel in his own rooms, and remembering that case makes the lawyer rein in his temper.

Which British weekly named its column on work and management Bartleby, after Melville's reluctant clerk?

The Economist chose Bartleby as the byline for a column that sympathises with employees who carry out baffling orders they would sooner refuse.

Which horror writer's 1998 novel Bag of Bones echoes Bartleby's famous refusal in its final line?

Stephen King threads Melville's tale through Bag of Bones, whose narrator is a bestselling novelist struck by severe writer's block.

Which actor known for eccentric roles played the title clerk in the 2001 film Bartleby, set in a modern office?

Crispin Glover played the silent clerk opposite David Paymer as his boss, in a comedy-drama that trades Wall Street for a public records office on a hilltop.

Which detail about the lawyer who narrates Bartleby, the Scrivener does Melville withhold from start to finish?

His name never appears, though the lawyer freely gives his age, about sixty, and his proudest reputation, that of an eminently safe man.

Which nickname does the office boy in Bartleby, the Scrivener take from the cakes he fetches for the clerks?

Ginger Nut earns a dollar a week as errand boy and sweeper, sent to the law office by a cart-driving father who hopes to see his son on the bench one day.

Which elderly copyist in Bartleby, the Scrivener works steadily each morning but blots his pages after noon?

Turkey is a short Englishman of about sixty whose face blazes red after his midday dinner, and he pleads that a blot or two should not be held against grey hairs.

Which young copyist in Bartleby, the Scrivener is a morning victim of ambition and indigestion?

Nippers grinds his teeth and fusses with the height of his desk until noon, then calms down just as his older colleague turns unruly, so their fits never overlap.

Which famously wealthy New Yorker does the lawyer in Bartleby, the Scrivener boast of having worked for?

John Jacob Astor praised the lawyer's prudence and method, and the narrator admits he loves to repeat those three words because they ring like bullion.

What does the lawyer set up around Bartleby's desk to keep the new clerk out of sight but within call?

A folding screen, high and green, hides Bartleby in his corner, and he withdraws behind it so often that the lawyer comes to call the spot a hermitage.

Which task does the lawyer ask of Bartleby on the clerk's third day, drawing the first of his famous refusals?

To proofread a paper with his employer was all Bartleby was asked: copyists verified their work by reading it aloud against the original, a chore the lawyer admits is dull and wearisome.

What does the lawyer assume Bartleby has damaged when the clerk announces he will do no more writing?

His eyesight seemed the obvious casualty, since Bartleby looked dull and glazed after weeks of nonstop work by a dim window, so the lawyer kindly urged rest and fresh air.

Where is the lawyer heading to hear a celebrated preacher on the Sunday he finds Bartleby living in the office?

Trinity Church never sees him that morning: after finding Bartleby's blanket, soap and a morsel of cheese in the office, the lawyer feels unfit for a sermon and turns back.

In what does the lawyer find Bartleby's savings knotted up, tucked into a pigeonhole of the clerk's desk?

An old bandanna, heavy and knotted, served as Bartleby's savings bank, and the discovery helps turn the lawyer's first pity toward fear and repulsion.

How does the lawyer finally escape Bartleby after failing to make the clerk quit the Wall Street office?

He moves his business to new rooms rather than throw a harmless man into the street, telling Bartleby the old chambers are too far from City Hall.

Where does Bartleby sit all day after a new tenant turns him out of the lawyer's former rooms?

On the stairs, perched on the banister, Bartleby haunts the building by day and sleeps in its entry by night, until clients begin deserting the other tenants.

Who finally sends for the police to remove Bartleby from the Wall Street building in Melville's story?

The landlord acts while the lawyer is hiding out in the suburbs, and the narrator, indignant at first, ends up almost approving of a step he could never take himself.

Which lucrative legal position, later abolished, brought the lawyer the extra work that led him to hire Bartleby?

Master in Chancery was a role the lawyer expected to profit from for life, and he grumbles that the state's new constitution swept it away after only a few short years.

Whose plaster bust does Bartleby stare at instead of the lawyer when questioned about his past?

Cicero sits in plaster just above the lawyer's head, and the narrator says he would as soon turn that bust out of doors as dismiss so mild a clerk.

Which job does the lawyer suggest to Bartleby along with a dry-goods clerkship and bill collecting?

Bartender is one of the lawyer's desperate career ideas, and Bartleby turns it down like the rest while insisting, absurdly, that he is not particular.

What kind of criminal does the prison's grub-man assume the pale, genteel Bartleby must be?

A forger was the grub-man's guess, since the ones he has fed were always pale and genteel, and the lawyer replies that he never knew any socially.

Where does the lawyer ask Bartleby to go on a three-minute errand, only to hear the usual refusal?

The Post Office was only a short walk away, and the lawyer admits he made the request partly because he burned to be rebelled against again.

In the last line of Melville's story, the lawyer sighs first for Bartleby and then for what?

Humanity is the last word of the tale, a sigh that widens one clerk's lonely fate into everyone's, coming just after the lawyer passes on a rumour about his past.

Which deserted ancient city does the lawyer liken Wall Street to on a Sunday in Bartleby, the Scrivener?

Petra is the lawyer's image for a street that hums with industry on weekdays, then echoes with sheer vacancy at nightfall and all through the day of rest.

Which Melville novel had sold so poorly that its author was in debt when he wrote Bartleby?

Moby-Dick had appeared two years earlier, and its failure left Melville in debt to Harper and Brothers, one reason he may have turned to magazine fiction.

Which Melville novel was savaged by reviewers the year before Bartleby, the Scrivener appeared in print?

Pierre was a critical and financial disaster, and Melville may have written his tale of a clerk who stops writing partly as an emotional answer to those reviews.

Which New York magazine first printed Bartleby, the Scrivener, unsigned and in two parts, in late 1853?

Putnam's Monthly was launched that same year as a vehicle for the best new American writing, and it ran the tale across its November and December issues.

Which 1856 Melville collection reprinted Bartleby, the Scrivener alongside Benito Cereno and The Encantadas?

The Piazza Tales gathered six pieces, and Melville meant to call the volume Benito Cereno and Other Sketches until he wrote a new introductory story for it.

What kind of item in the New York Tribune and Times is thought to have given Melville the idea for Bartleby?

An advertisement for a new book, The Lawyer's Story, printed its whole first chapter, in which a lawyer takes on an extra clerk of modest, quiet, gentlemanly manner.

Which essayist's piece The Transcendentalist has been suggested as an inspiration for Melville's Bartleby?

Ralph Waldo Emerson is the source proposed by the critic Christopher Sten, who finds close parallels between that essay and the tale of a clerk who opts out of everything.

The 1970 film Bartleby, with John McEnery as the clerk, relocates Melville's story from New York to which city?

London of the 1970s replaces 1850s Manhattan in the British version, which opens with the clerk stepping off a train at Euston Station and stowing his belongings in a locker.

Which American playwright supplied the libretto for a Bartleby opera staged at the York Playhouse in 1961?

Edward Albee wrote the words for the one-act opera, set to music by William Flanagan, the composer who also scored the 1960 premiere of his play The Sandbox.

Which Lord of the Rings actor voiced the Lawyer in BBC Radio 4's 2004 dramatisation of Bartleby?

Ian Holm, the film trilogy's elderly Bilbo Baggins, played the Lawyer opposite Adrian Scarborough as the clerk who will not budge.

Which future Oscar winner played a student who answers like Bartleby in a 1990 episode of Head of the Class?

Ke Huy Quan played Jasper Kwong, a quiet transfer student who meets every invitation to join the academic team with the scrivener's reply until his teacher spots the quotation.