Other editions of book The Confidence-Man

In Herman Melville’s The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade, a group of steamboat passengers paddle to New Orleans on April Fool’s Day. As the Mississippi carries them down river, everyone is selling something: quack remedies; stock in a mining company about to fail; a fraudulent charity for widows and orphans. Set on the eve of the Civil War, as the frontier rapidly expands and Native Americans are driven to near-extinction, Melville’s narrative poses the question: “In which institution does one place one’s faith?”A satire on the works of Manifest Destiny, The Confidence-Man was Herman Melville’s last novel before he retired from writing.HarperPerennial Classics brings great works of literature to life in digital format, upholding the highest standards in ebook production and celebrating reading in all its forms. Look for more titles in the HarperPerennial Classics collection to build your digital library.

In Herman Melville’s The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade, a group of steamboat passengers paddle to New Orleans on April Fool’s Day. As the Mississippi carries them down river, everyone is selling something: quack remedies; stock in a mining company about to fail; a fraudulent charity for widows and orphans. Set on the eve of the Civil War, as the frontier rapidly expands and Native Americans are driven to near-extinction, Melville’s narrative poses the question: “In which institution does one place one’s faith?”A satire on the works of Manifest Destiny, The Confidence-Man was Herman Melville’s last novel before he retired from writing.HarperPerennial Classics brings great works of literature to life in digital format, upholding the highest standards in ebook production and celebrating reading in all its forms. Look for more titles in the HarperPerennial Classics collection to build your digital library.

From the author of Moby Dick: A con artist swindles his fellow passengers on a Mississippi River steamboat in this exploration of human nature. A mysterious stranger boards a steamboat bound for New Orleans on April Fools’ Day. But just who is this confidence-man? At first, he is a mute, clad in cream-colored clothes and a white fur hat, boarding the steamer Fidèle in St. Louis. The man transforms when he meets a group of passengers. He assumes the identities of a crippled beggar named “Black Guinea,” an agent from the Seminole Widow and Orphan Society, and the president of the Black Rapids Coal Company, among other disguises. As the ship makes its way to its final destination and the huckster’s deceptions lead to thefts, everyone on board will be left wondering whom they can trust. A cultural satire, allegory, and metaphysical treatise, The Confidence-Man is one of the most unconventional works by the legendary author of Moby Dick and Billy Budd, Sailor.

“The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade” is the 1857 novel by Herman Melville, his ninth and final work. It tells the interlocking stories of a group of travelers aboard a steamboat on the Mississippi River making their way towards New Orleans. Emulating the style of Chaucer’s “The Canterbury Tales”, the novel centers on its title character, the Confidence-Man, a mysterious figure who sneaks aboard the steamboat and successively tests the confidence of the passengers. He adopts various disguises, such as a handicapped beggar, a sophisticated businessman, and a cosmopolitan gentleman, swindling his fellow passengers in many small ways. The story consists primarily of the reactions of the travelers to this schemer and in doing so the dishonesties and pretensions of the passengers are exposed and their true natures are revealed. Melville took a satirical approach to contemporary cultural figures in much of the novel and it is believed that many of the characters were based on popular authors, such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Edgar Allen Poe. “The Confidence-Man” is a rich exposition on the nature of human identity set against the vivid imagery of the Mississippi riverboat era. This edition is printed on premium acid-free paper.

In the same moment with his advent, he stepped aboard the favorite steamer Fidèle, on the point of starting for New Orleans. Stared at, but unsaluted, with the air of one neither courting nor shunning regard, but evenly pursuing the path of duty, lead it through solitudes or cities, he held on his way along the lower deck until he chanced to come to a placard nigh the captain's office, offering a reward for the capture of a mysterious impostor, supposed to have recently arrived from the East; quite an original genius in his vocation, as would appear, though wherein his originality consisted was not clearly given; but what purported to be a careful description of his person followed.As if it had been a theatre-bill, crowds were gathered about the announcement, and among them certain chevaliers, whose eyes, it was plain, were on the capitals, or, at least, earnestly seeking sight of them from behind intervening coats; but as for their fingers, they were enveloped in some myth; though, during a chance interval, one of these chevaliers somewhat showed his hand in purchasing from another chevalier, ex-officio a peddler of money-belts, one of his popular safe-guards, while another peddler, who was still another versatile chevalier, hawked, in the thick of the throng, the lives of Measan, the bandit of Ohio, Murrel, the pirate of the Mississippi, and the brothers Harpe, the Thugs of the Green River country, in Kentucky—creatures, with others of the sort, one and all exterminated at the time, and for the most part, like the hunted generations of wolves in the same regions, leaving comparatively few successors; which would seem cause for unalloyed gratulation, and is such to all except those who think that in new countries, where the wolves are killed off, the foxes increase.- Taken from "The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade" written by Herman Melville

How is this book unique?Font adjustments & biography includedUnabridged (100% Original content)IllustratedAbout The Confidence-Man by Herman MelvilleThe Confidence-Man: His Masquerade is the ninth book and final novel by American writer Herman Melville. The Confidence-Man portrays a Canterbury Tales–style group of steamboat passengers whose interlocking stories are told as they travel down the Mississippi River toward New Orleans. Scholar Robert Milder notes: "Long mistaken for a flawed novel, the book is now admired as a masterpiece of irony and control, though it continues to resist interpretive consensus." The novel's title refers to its central character, an ambiguous figure who sneaks aboard a Mississippi steamboat on April Fool's Day. This stranger attempts to test the confidence of the passengers, whose varied reactions constitute the bulk of the text. Each person including the reader is forced to confront that in which he places his trust. The Confidence-Man uses the Mississippi River as a metaphor for those broader aspects of American and human identity that unify the otherwise disparate characters.[citation needed] Melville also employs the river's fluidity as a reflection and backdrop of the shifting identities of his "confidence man". The novel is written as cultural satire, allegory, and metaphysical treatise, dealing with themes of sincerity, identity, morality, religiosity, economic materialism, irony, and cynicism. Many critics have placed The Confidence-Man alongside Melville's Moby-Dick and "Bartleby, the Scrivener" as a precursor to 20th-century literary preoccupations with nihilism, existentialism, and absurdism.

“In The Confidence-Man,” writes John Bryant in his Introduction, “Melville found a way to render our tragic sense of self and society through the comic strategies of the confidence game. He puts the reader in the game to play its parts and to contemplate the inconsistencies of its knaves and fools.” Set on a Mississippi steamer on April Fool’s Day and populated by a series of shape-shifting con men, The Confidence-Man is a challenging metaphysical and ethical exploration of antebellum American society. Set from the first American edition of 1857, this Modern Library paperback includes an Appendix with Bryant’s innovative “fluid text” analysis of early manuscript fragments from Melville’s novel.

The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade is the ninth book and final novel by American writer Herman Melville, first published in New York in 1857. The book was published on April 1, presumably the exact day of the novel's setting. The Confidence-Man portrays a Canterbury Tales–style group of steamboat passengers whose interlocking stories are told as they travel down the Mississippi River toward New Orleans. According to scholar Robert Milder its reputation has been rising: "Long mistaken for a flawed novel, the book is now admired as a masterpiece of irony and control, though it continues to resist interpretive consensus."After the novel's publication, Melville turned from professional writing and became a professional lecturer, mainly addressing his worldwide travels, and later for nineteen years a federal government employee.

This carefully crafted ebook: “THE CONFIDENCE-MAN (Modern Classics Series)” is formatted for your eReader with a functional and detailed table of contents.The Confidence-Man is an ambiguous figure who sneaks aboard a Mississippi steamboat on April Fool's Day. This stranger attempts to test the confidence of the several steamboat passengers whose interlocking stories are told as they travel down the Mississippi River toward New Orleans. The novel is written as cultural satire, allegory, and metaphysical treatise, dealing with themes of sincerity, identity, morality, religiosity, economic materialism, irony, and cynicism.Herman Melville's writing draws on his experience at sea as a common sailor, exploration of literature and philosophy, and engagement in the contradictions of American society in a period of rapid change. His best known works include Typee, a romantic account of his experiences in Polynesian life, its sequel Omoo, and the great classic Moby-Dick.