The Piazza Tales (AmazonClassics Edition) characters

Appears from the start

The unnamed owner of a country house who adds a piazza so that he can admire the mountain view in comfort. A bright point across the valley excites his imagination, and he sets out to discover whether the distant place matches the ideal scene he has invented for it.

Appears from the start

A lonely young woman living in poverty in a remote cottage across the mountains from the narrator's house. From her own doorway she looks toward his sunlit piazza as an image of happiness, just as he had imagined her distant home to be an enchanted refuge.

First appears in chapter 2

An elderly Wall Street lawyer who narrates Bartleby's story. Cautious, prosperous, and proud of avoiding conflict, he employs law-copyists in a quiet office and tries to manage unusual behavior through reason, charity, and withdrawal rather than direct confrontation.

First appears in chapter 2

A pale, quiet scrivener newly hired by the lawyer. At first he copies legal documents with extraordinary industry, working behind a screen near a window that faces a wall, but he soon declines a routine request to help compare a copy.

First appears in chapter 2

An older copyist in the lawyer's office. He works steadily in the mornings but becomes flushed, noisy, and error-prone after lunch, leading his employer to tolerate him by arranging tasks around his daily changes in temperament.

First appears in chapter 2

A younger copyist whose ambition and indigestion make him restless and irritable in the mornings, though he settles into competent work later in the day. His opposite schedule makes him an imperfect counterpart to Turkey.

First appears in chapter 4

The American captain of the Bachelor's Delight, a sealing ship lying near an apparently distressed Spanish vessel off the coast of Chile. Confident in his own goodwill and judgment, he boards to offer assistance and interprets the troubling scene through his optimistic assumptions.

First appears in chapter 4

The sickly and agitated Spanish captain of the San Dominick. He tells Delano that storms, disease, and shortages have devastated his ship, and he appears unable to command its disorderly passengers or function without the close attention of his servant Babo.

First appears in chapter 4

Don Benito's constantly attentive servant aboard the San Dominick. He supports the weakened captain, answers questions about his health, and appears to Delano to be an exceptionally devoted caregiver amid the ship's confusion.

First appears in chapter 4

A tall enslaved man aboard the San Dominick who is repeatedly brought before Don Benito in chains. His proud silence and Babo's management of the apparent punishment add to the scenes that Delano struggles to interpret.

First appears in chapter 6

The deceased owner of the enslaved Africans transported aboard the San Dominick. The later legal account identifies his murder as an early act of the uprising that placed Babo and his companions in control of the ship.

First appears in chapter 7

A traveling salesman who arrives at a house during a violent thunderstorm and uses the owner's fear of lightning to promote his protective rods. His confident technical claims and alarming manner are the chief instruments of his sales pitch.

Also known as the Chola widow

First appears in chapter 9

A woman found alone on Norfolk Isle after coming there with her husband and brother to gather tortoise oil. The deaths of both men and the failure of a promised ship to return have left her to survive a long abandonment.

Also known as the hermit of Hood's Isle

First appears in chapter 9

A violent European outcast whose solitary life on Hood's Isle involves deception and the coercion of other vulnerable people. His history replaces the romantic image of an island hermit with one of predation beyond effective law.

First appears in chapter 10

A renowned architect and mechanician commissioned by an Italian city to build a monumental bell tower. Brilliant, secretive, and fiercely controlling of his work, he undertakes both the tower and an elaborate mechanical figure meant to animate its public ceremony.