The Confidence-Man

“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 includes a biographical afterword.