The Lockdown Chronicles 24: Herman

Click on the image below to read the comic strip in full size. Sources and references on this post under the comic strip below.

This comic strip is dedicated to mi maestro Antonio Saborit.

“Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street” (1853) is (of course) a short story by Herman Melville (1819–1891) where a Wall Street clerk, after an initial bout of hard work, refuses to make any task required of him, saying “I would prefer not to.” When the narrator stops by the office one Sunday morning, he discovers that Bartleby has started living there.[Wikipedia entry] [Internet Archive] Melville stayed in London at 25 Craven Street in Charing Cross at the end of 1849. [English Heritage]

Text sources: BBC News (10 May 2020) “Coronavirus: Boris Johnson to launch Covid-19 alert system”, bbc.co.uk; Blackall, Molly and Busby, Mattha (10 May 2020) “Confusion over government’s new slogan”, UK coronavirus live, the Guardian, guardian.com; Melville, Herman (1853) “Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street”, via the Internet Archive.

Source images: panels 1-2: Brown, Elliott (October 16, 2009), “25 Craven Street, London – former home of Herman Melville”, digital photograph, via Flickr, CC-BY; panels 3-4: A portrait of Herman Melville (1870) by Joseph Oriel Eaton (1829–1875), Houghton Library, Harvard University, Modern Books and Manuscripts., via Wikimedia Commons. Public Domain. This comic strip is CC-BY-NC-SA

References

Melville, Herman (1853) “Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street”, via the Internet Archive, available at http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/11231/pg11231-images.html [Accessed 10 May 2020]

English Heritage, Melville, Herman (1819–1891), available at  https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/blue-plaques/herman-melville/ [Accessed 10 May 2020]

BBC News (10 May 2020) “Coronavirus: Boris Johnson to launch Covid-19 alert system”, available at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-52602635 [Accessed 10 May 2020]

Blackall, Molly and Busby, Mattha (10 May 2020) “Confusion over government’s new slogan”, UK coronavirus live, the Guardian, available at https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/live/2020/may/10/uk-coronavirus-live-boris-johnson-to-announce-covid-19-alert-system  [Accessed 10 May 2020]

Brown, Elliott (October 16, 2009), “25 Craven Street, London – former home of Herman Melville”, digital photograph, available via Flickr at https://www.flickr.com/photos/ell-r-brown/4026669957 [Accessed 10 May 2020]

Eaton, Joseph Oriel (1870) A portrait of Herman Melville. Via Houghton Library, Harvard University, Modern Books and Manuscripts., available via Wikimedia Commons at https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Herman_Melville_by_Joseph_O_Eaton.jpg [Accessed 10 May 2020]

 

—

The Lockdown Chronicles is a series of periodical comic strips made at night (in candlelight!) adapting and reusing openly-licensed or public domain items from online digital collections. Publication and tweetage are scheduled in advance. Historical sources are adapted and updated for the current pandemic; please refer to each strip’s references on each post for further context.  Catch up with the series at https://epriego.blog/tag/the-lockdown-chronicles/.