Bartleby, the Scrivener
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40 free Bartleby, the Scrivener trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Herman Melville's 1853 tale of a Wall Street law clerk who politely stops doing his job is one of the most widely taught short stories in American literature. It is funny, eerie and sad by turns, and readers still argue about what the pale young man behind the desk is really refusing. This quiz covers the whole story: the lawyer who tells it and his oddly nicknamed staff, the clerk's slow withdrawal from work, the scenes after the office is abandoned, and the rumour about his past that closes the tale. Later questions turn to how Melville published it, what may have inspired it, and the films, radio plays and novels that borrowed from it. It suits students revising for a class test, book clubs, and anyone who read the story once and wants to see how much stuck. Every answer comes with a short explanation.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which polite reply does Bartleby give whenever the Wall Street lawyer asks him to do a task?
That he would prefer not to
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.
Q 02Where is Bartleby rumoured to have clerked until a change of administration cost him the job?
Dead Letter Office
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.
Q 03Which New York jail is Bartleby taken to after he refuses to leave the lawyer's old building?
The Tombs
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.
Q 04What kills Bartleby in the prison yard, days after the lawyer's first visit there?
Starvation
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.
Q 05What does Bartleby spend hours staring at through the window beside his desk in the lawyer's New York office?
A brick wall
A brick wall stands three feet from Bartleby's panes, a blank view that suits a tale Melville subtitled A Story of Wall-Street.
Q 06What was the daily work of a scrivener such as Bartleby in a New York law office of the 1850s?
Hand-copying documents
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.
Q 07The murderer the lawyer recalls when furious with Bartleby was the brother of which famous gunmaker?
Samuel Colt
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.
Q 08Which British weekly named its column on work and management Bartleby, after Melville's reluctant clerk?
The Economist
The Economist chose Bartleby as the byline for a column that sympathises with employees who carry out baffling orders they would sooner refuse.
Q 09Which horror writer's 1998 novel Bag of Bones echoes Bartleby's famous refusal in its final line?
Stephen King
Stephen King threads Melville's tale through Bag of Bones, whose narrator is a bestselling novelist struck by severe writer's block.
Q 10Which actor known for eccentric roles played the title clerk in the 2001 film Bartleby, set in a modern office?
Crispin Glover
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.
Q 11Which detail about the lawyer who narrates Bartleby, the Scrivener does Melville withhold from start to finish?
His name
His name never appears, though the lawyer freely gives his age, about sixty, and his proudest reputation, that of an eminently safe man.
Q 12Which nickname does the office boy in Bartleby, the Scrivener take from the cakes he fetches for the clerks?
Ginger Nut
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.
Q 13Which elderly copyist in Bartleby, the Scrivener works steadily each morning but blots his pages after noon?
Turkey
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.
Q 21How does the lawyer finally escape Bartleby after failing to make the clerk quit the Wall Street office?
He moves his business
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.
Q 22Where does Bartleby sit all day after a new tenant turns him out of the lawyer's former rooms?
On the stairs
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.
Q 23Who finally sends for the police to remove Bartleby from the Wall Street building in Melville's story?
The landlord
Q 14Which young copyist in Bartleby, the Scrivener is a morning victim of ambition and indigestion?
Nippers
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.
Q 15Which famously wealthy New Yorker does the lawyer in Bartleby, the Scrivener boast of having worked for?
John Jacob Astor
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.
Q 16What does the lawyer set up around Bartleby's desk to keep the new clerk out of sight but within call?
A folding screen
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.
Q 17Which task does the lawyer ask of Bartleby on the clerk's third day, drawing the first of his famous refusals?
Proofread a paper
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.
Q 18What does the lawyer assume Bartleby has damaged when the clerk announces he will do no more writing?
His eyesight
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.
Q 19Where is the lawyer heading to hear a celebrated preacher on the Sunday he finds Bartleby living in the office?
Trinity Church
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.
Q 20In what does the lawyer find Bartleby's savings knotted up, tucked into a pigeonhole of the clerk's desk?
An old bandanna
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.
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.
Q 24Which lucrative legal position, later abolished, brought the lawyer the extra work that led him to hire Bartleby?
Master in Chancery
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.
Q 25Whose plaster bust does Bartleby stare at instead of the lawyer when questioned about his past?
Cicero
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.
Q 26Which job does the lawyer suggest to Bartleby along with a dry-goods clerkship and bill collecting?
Bartender
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.
Q 27What kind of criminal does the prison's grub-man assume the pale, genteel Bartleby must be?
A forger
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.
Q 28Where does the lawyer ask Bartleby to go on a three-minute errand, only to hear the usual refusal?
The Post Office
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.
Q 29In the last line of Melville's story, the lawyer sighs first for Bartleby and then for what?
Humanity
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.
Q 30Which deserted ancient city does the lawyer liken Wall Street to on a Sunday in Bartleby, the Scrivener?
Petra
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.