How long does it take to read The Confidence Man?
The Confidence Man by Herman Melville takes about 6 hours 31 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
About 6 hours 31 minutes
A weekend read
First published 1857. 355 pages, about 97,625 words. Written for children.
14 days at 30 minutes a day
Estimate based on 275 words per page.
At other speeds
| Slow, 150 words a minute | 10 hours 51 minutes |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 6 hours 31 minutes |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 4 hours 4 minutes |
The page count is the median across 100 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
Onboard the Fidele, a steamboat floating down the Mississippi to New Orleans, a confidence man sets out to defraud his fellow passengers. In quick succession he assumes numerous guises - from a legless beggar and a worldly businessman to a collector for charitable causes and a 'cosmopolitan' gentleman, who simply swindles a barber out of the price of a shave. Making very little from his hoaxes, the pleasure of trickery seems an end in itself for this slippery conman. Is he the Devil? Is his chicanery merely intended to expose the mercenary concerns of those around him? Set on April Fool's Day, The Confidence-Man (1857) is an engaging comedy of masquerades, digressions and shifting identity, and a devastating satire on the American dream.
Subjects: Fiction, Swindlers and swindling, Steamboats, Mississippi River, Confidence-man (Melville, Herman), Fiction, general
