The Piazza Tales is a collection of six short stories by American writer Herman Melville, published by Dix & Edwards in the United States in May 1856 and in Britain in June. Except for the newly written title story, "The Piazza," all of the stories had appeared in Putnam's Monthly between 1853 and 1855. The collection includes what have long been regarded as three of Melville's most important achievements in the genre of short fiction, "Bartleby, the Scrivener", "Benito Cereno", and "The Encantadas", his sketches of the Galápagos Islands. (Billy Budd, arguably his greatest piece of short fiction, would remain unpublished in his lifetime.)

Melville had originally intended to entitle the volume Benito Cereno and Other Sketches, but settled on the definitive title after he had written the introductory story. The book received largely favorable reviews, with reviewers especially praising "The Encantadas" but did not sell well enough to get Melville out of his financial straits, probably because short fiction for magazines had little appeal to bookbuyers.^{[citation needed]} From after Melville's rediscovery to the end of the twentieth century, the short works that attracted the most critical attention were "Bartleby," "Benito Cereno" and "The Encantadas," with "The Piazza" a little behind those.^{[citation needed]}

After reviewers denigrated Moby-Dick in 1851, Harper brothers changed the terms for its successor, Pierre; or, The Ambiguities. Melville's London publisher Richard Bentley would not publish Pierre without alterations after he saw the American proofs in 1852, which Melville could not accept. Pierre found no British publisher and hence Melville received no advance payment in the summer of 1852. The reviews for Pierre were harsh, and this damaged Melville's reputation the more because the reviews followed upon the mixed reception of the whaling novel.

In the spring of 1853 Melville could not get his next work printed, most likely, Sealts thinks, because Harper "simply refused to bring out another work by Herman Melville in the following year to risk the renewed wrath of already hostile reviewers". Under the circumstances, publishing anonymously seemed an attractive strategy, and the firm did ask him to write for Harper's New Monthly Magazine. His contributions to that periodical were not collected in a book during his lifetime.

In October 1852, editor Charles Frederick Briggs sent a circular out to writers, including Melville, announcing the plan "to publish an Original periodical of a character different from any now in existence", inviting him, being among "the best talent of the country", to submit contributions to the new monthly that would only print American contributions. This was Putnam's Monthly Magazine that first appeared in January 1853. With the ambition to be, in Perry Miller's words, "the vehicle of home literature" came the determination to pay authors a handsome sum. For three years the magazine was successful, in Miller's estimation because of the brilliance of both the articles and of the editing—primarily by Briggs, who understood that "'A man buys a Magazine to be amused'".

Melville received the February issue, which carried a summary of Melville's career in the shape of an essay by Fitz-James O'Brien, a young Irish immigrant. According to Parker, this publication was "the first retrospective survey of Melville's career anyone had ever published".

Melville's first contribution, "Bartleby. A Story of Wall-Street", was published in two installments in the magazine's first year of existence, in no. 11 (November), and no. 12 (December). "The Encantadas, or Enchanted Isles" appeared in three installments in 1854, in no. 15 (March), no. 16 (April), and no. 17 (May). "The Lightning-Rod Man" appeared in 1854, in no. 20 (August).

In March 1855, Putnam sold the magazine to Dix and Edwards due to dwindling subscriptions, Briggs left, and George William Curtis became editor.