Eight of the nineteen "Contemporary Reviews" are new to this edi-tion, some only fairly recently discovered. "Biographical Overviews"provides reports from Hershel Parker, Johannes Dietrich Bergmann,Dennis Marnon, Stephen D. Hoy, and Jonathan A. Cook. Essays in"Sources, Backgrounds, and Criticism" explore aspects of antebellumAmerican life central to The Confidence-Man--utopias, sects, cults,and cure-alls, Transcendentalism, the Devil in the Bible and popular lit-erature, and the stark phenomenon of Indian hating. Controversialpieces by Melville himself mix with controversial pieces by his friendsNathaniel Hawthorne, Dr. John Wakefield Francis, and Orville Dewey.Modern contributors include Carl Van Vechten, Elizabeth S. Foster,Susan M. Ryan, Patricia Cline Cohen, and Margaret Coel.
A Selected Bibliography is also included.