Confidence-Man: His Masquerade

A scathing, razor-sharp satire set on a New Orleans-bound riverboat, The Confidence-Man exposes the fraudulent optimism of so many American idols and idealists--Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and P. T. Barnum, in particular--and draws a dark vision of a country being swallowed by its illusions of progress.

Why is Dalkey Archive doing yet another edition of The Confidence-Man? And why is it doing Melville at all? First, this edition, originally published by Bobbs-Merrill over forty years ago, contains remarkable annotations by H. Bruce Franklin, intended for both the general reader and the scholar. It's an edition we have long admired. More importantly, we believe that The Confidence-Man is America's first postmodern novel--game-like, darkly comic, and completely inventive.

Herman Melville (1819-1891) was an American writer and poet whose works include Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, The Confidence-Man, "Bartleby, the Scrivener," and the posthumous novella Billy Budd, Sailor. Best known during his lifetime for his earlier travel-writing, the ambition and breadth of his later works have won him an enduring reputation as one of America's greatest authors.

Daniel Handler, who provides a preface to this edition of The Confidence-Man, is the author of three novels of his own and twelve books collectively entitled A Series of Unfortunate Events under the pseudonym Lemony Snicket. H. Bruce Franklin is a noted Melville scholar.