Fiction, American & Canadian Literature, General & Miscellaneous Literary Criticism, World Literature, Fiction Subjects

The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade

Name: The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade
Author: Herman Melville
ISBN: 9781564784544

by Herman Melville, H. Bruce Franklin

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Overview

Herman Melville's The Confindence-Man: His Masquerade was the tenth, last, and most perplexing book of his decade as a professional man of letters. After it he gave up his ambitious effort to write works that would be both popular and profound and turned to poetry. The book was published on April 1--the very day of its title character's April Fools' Day masquerade on a Mississippi River Steamboat.

Synopsis

The text of The Confidence-Man reprinted here is again that of the first American edition (1857), slightly corrected.

The New York Times

The oddities of thought, felicities of expression, the wit, humor, and rollicking inspirations are as abundant and original as in any of the productions of this most remarkable writer.

About the Author, Herman Melville

Herman Melville's legend is as mammoth and elusive as the whale that established it. The author's Moby-Dick; Or, The Whale stands as one of literature's greatest epics, a story of mythological proportions that was grounded in real life and a new way of storytelling. Melville's work, underappreciated in its time, remains as much subject to debate and interpretation as it was when he first caught the public eye with his South Seas adventure, Typee, in 1846.