Un-named in revision

 Bartleby, this is a friend....

The 1856 book version of Bartleby makes a nameless "friend" of the "broad meat-like" grub-man, whom Melville originally called "Mr. Cutlets" in the December 1853 issue of Putnam's Monthly Magazine. In the magazine version, the narrator introduced the grub-man by name:

 "Bartleby, this is Mr. Cutlets; you will find him very useful to you."

After revision, Mr. Cutlets is just "a friend."

"Bartleby, this is a friend; you will find him very useful to you." --The Piazza Tales

Also deleted in revision, the invitation to dine privately with both Cutlets, Mr. and Mrs.

"May Mrs. Cutlets and I have the pleasure of your company to dinner, sir, in Mrs. Cutlets' private room?"

The un-naming of Mr. Cutlets and deletion of his dinner invitation have been noted before, of course. Dismissing the Cutlets business as "inappropriate slap-stick," Egbert S. Oliver in the 1948 Hendricks House edition of The Piazza Tales (page 230) gives its judicious "removal" as "one of the principal revisions that Melville made in this story in preparing it for book publication." The Cutlets are back in the text of the 1987 Northwestern-Newberry edition of The Piazza Tales and Other Prose Pieces, 1839-1860. As discussed there in the notes (page 579), the N-N editors reject this and other revisions as suspiciously inartful and un-Melvillean "instances of toning down."

For further study:

• Harrison Hayford, Melville's Prisoners. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2003.
• Dan McCall, The Silence of Bartleby. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1989.
• Douglas Anderson, Re-Reading The Silence of Bartleby. American Literary History Vol. 20, No. 3, Reviews in American Literary History: New Books from the Last 20 Years (Summer 2008), pp. 479-48. 

Hendricks House editions

Here are links to some Hendricks House editions of books by Herman Melville that are Google-digitized and accessible online courtesy of HathiTrust Digital Library.

MOBY-DICK (1851)

• Moby-Dick; or, The Whale 1952, ed. Howard P. Vincent and Luther S. Mansfield.
  <https://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39015046801760>

PIERRE (1852)

• Pierre; or, The Ambiguities 1949, ed. Henry A. Murray. 
  <https://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39015066059091>

THE CONFIDENCE-MAN (1857)

• The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade 1954, ed. Elizabeth S. Foster.
  <https://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39015002987603>

CLAREL (1876)

• Clarel: A Poem and Pilgrimage in the Holy Land 1960, ed. Walter E. Bezanson
  <https://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39015005201424>

Update - 04/28/2024

As alert readers have pointed out in the comments, digital versions of Hendricks House editions are also accessible courtesy of the Internet Archive. Virtual editions there now include The Piazza Tales by Herman Melville (Hendricks House, 1948) and Gordon Roper's copy of Melville's Collected Poems (Hendricks House, 1947), donated to the Trent University Library. Both titles are available to borrow for 1 hour at a time. 

THE PIAZZA TALES (1856)  

• The Piazza Tales 1948, edited by Egbert S. Oliver.<https://archive.org/details/piazzatales0000melv_j8m0/page/n7/mode/2up> 

COLLECTED POEMS (1947)

• Collected Poems 1947, edited by Howard P. Vincent.<https://archive.org/details/collectedpoemsof0000melv/page/n1/mode/2up>

Alas, I still have not seen or heard about any digital version of the 1990 Hendricks House Mardi and a voyage thither, edited by Nathalia Wright.

Hendricks House Pierre

The Hendricks House edition of Melville's Pierre; or, The Ambiguities is Google-digitized and accessible online courtesy of HathiTrust Digital Library. Here below, one of three University of Michigan volumes, all reprints, currently available there.




Another copy of the 1949 Hendricks House Pierre (also a reprint, 1957) is accessible via the great Internet Archive:

Hendricks House Omoo

Hershel Parker makes great use of Harrison Hayford's work on the Hendricks House Omoo in the first volume of Herman Melville: A Biography.

"For separating fact from fiction in Omoo I rely primarily on the documents Hayford provided me (most of which he printed in the Hendricks House Omoo)...." --Herman Melville: A Biography

Likewise Mary K. Bercaw Edwards, in her introduction to the Penguin edition of Omoo, heartily commends the Hendricks House edition:

"Hayford's work for the Hendricks House edition remains the seminal publication on Omoo...." --Penguin Omoo 

As the Penguin editor explains, "page proofs for the Hendricks House edition were completed in 1957, but the book was not published until 1969."

Despite generous citations by distinguished former students of Harrison Hayford, and by Canadian scholar Gordon Roper in the Northwestern-Newberry edition of Omoo, the classic Hendricks House edition of Melville's Omoo by Hayford and (did you know?) Walter Blair is not so well known as it should be.

The hard-to-find Hendricks House Moby-Dick is digitized in the Hathi Trust Digital Library. I was hoping to find the Hendricks House Omoo there too, but no dice. Yet.

Today's search at abebooks turns up just one ex-library copy at Easy Chair Books. I have one already so this one's yours. Another more expensive, and more tempting volume is the "excellent, collectible copy" offered for sale via Biblio by Rutter's Rarities. Inscribed by Harrison Hayford "to a fellow book rat." Yikes! It might be gone by the time you read this.

For now, here are two pages of Explanatory Notes from the copy I already own. Several of Hayford's notes pertain to the figure of Lem Hardy in Omoo.

Hendricks House Omoo, pages 354-5

Hendricks House Omoo, pages 356-7

1952 Hendricks House Moby-Dick

Important edition by Luther S. Mansfield and Howard P. Vincent, with extensive notes. Google-digitized and accessible online courtesy of HathiTrust Digital Library.

• https://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39015046801760

Harder to find now than the first American edition!


Available online courtesy of  HathiTrust Digital Library.