Rise of Silas Lapham

Literature & Fiction

Howells, William Dean.

Classics

International Thomson Publishing

William Dean Howells' the Rise of Silas Lapham

Reference

Words, Language & Grammar

Pearson College Div

The publication in 1882 of this classic book by “The Dean of American Letters”marked his transition from magazine editor and author of some mildly received comedies of manners, to leading American novelist and champion of realism in American literature. The story of Bartley Hubbard, a philandering, dishonest Boston journalist, and Marcia Gaylord, the wife who divorces him, is the first serious treatment of divorce in American literature. Although Howells had considered writing the novel for years, the actual composition of it brought forth another theme besides that of divorce—that of new journalism. Yet these two innovative and powerful themes are no more than vehicles for Howells’s real achievement—the perceptive delineation of contemporary American character, conditions in American culture, and the acute dislocations in ethical sensibility that fray the social fabric. Bartley was still free as air; but if he could once make up his mind to settle down in a hole like Equity he could have her by turning his hand.

A Modern Instance (Penguin American Library)

Humor & Entertainment

Humor

Penguin Classics

William Dean Howells' richly humorous characterization of a self-made millionaire in Boston society provides a paradigm of American culture in the Gilded Age. After establishing a fortune in the paint business, Silas Lapham moves his family from their Vermont farm to the city of Boston, where they awkwardly attempt to break into Brahmin society. Silas, greedy for wealth as well as prestige, brings his company to the brink of bankruptcy, and the family is forced to return to Vermont, financially ruined but morally renewed. As Kermit Vanderbilt points out in his introduction, the novel focuses on important themes in the American literary tradition: the efficacy of self-help and determination, the ambiguous benefits of social and economic progress, and the continual contradiction between urban and pastoral values. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

The Rise of Silas Lapham (Penguin Classics)

United States

Penguin Publishing Group

Set against a vividly depicted background of fin de siécle New York, this novel centers on the conflict between a self-made millionaire and a fervent social revolutionary-a conflict in which a man of goodwill futilely attempts to act as a mediator, only to be forced himself into a crisis of conscience. Here we see William Dean Howells's grasp of the realities of the American experience in an age of emerging social struggle. His absolute determination to fairly represent every point of view is evident throughout this multifaceted work. Both a memorable portrait of an era and a profoundly moving study of human relationships, A Hazard of New Fortunes fully justifies Alfred Kazin's ranking of Howells as "the first great domestic novelist of American life." For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

A Hazard of New Fortunes (Penguin Classics)

Perhaps the first novel to examine the phenomenon of American in Europe, Indian Summer treats a theme that Henry James would continue to explore over the next two decades. Both a love story and a valediction to youth, Howells' evocative novel reveals its story in a tone at once comic, ironic, and elegiac, with what Henry James called "his unerring sentiment of the American character."

Indian Summer (The ^AWorld's Classics)

Oxford University Press

Silas Lapham is a rough-hewn entrepreneur who has made his fortune in mineral paint. Socially ambitious for their daughters, Lapham and his wife encourage the suit of Tom Corey, son of an aristocratic Boston family, whose own parents are appalled by his consorting with vulgar upstarts. But which Lapham girl does Tom really love: the pretty blonde Irene or her bookish sister Penelope? As the romantic confusion is sorted out, Lapham suffers calamities that threaten both his financial and personal integrity. His rise is ultimately a moral one. The first major American novel to centre on a businessman, The Rise of Silas Lapham (1885) explores the capitalist ethos of the American Gilded Age. It is also a brilliant novel of manners that shows the comic confrontation of old wealth and new riches.

The Rise of Silas Lapham (The ^AWorld's Classics)

This novel was written in 1890 and is a panoramic novel of New York which dramatizes America's conflicting ideas and values in the late 19th century. The characters converge around the founding of a new magazine, the staff of which become involved in a strike.

A Hazard of New Fortunes (The ^AWorld's Classics)

Dugdale, John

This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

April Hopes (A Selected Edition of W. D. Howells)

Indiana Univ. Pr

A hazard of new fortunes (A selected edition of W. D. Howells)

Contemporary

Indiana University Press

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