the rise of silas lapham by william dean howells

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. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. William Dean Howells richly humorous characterization of a self-made millionaire. The Rise of Silas Lapham is about the materialistic rise of Silas. Buy a cheap copy of The Rise of Silas Lapham book by William Dean Howells. 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. Get FREE shipping on The Rise of Silas Lapham by William Dean Howells, from. He wrote 34 other novels, 29 plays, 9 books of travel, 6 books of literary criticism, 4 books of poetry, and 25 miscellaneous works. The novel recounts the moral dilemma of Colonel Silas Lapham, a newly wealthy, self-made businessman who has climbed over his former partner on the ladder to success. The Rise of Silas Lapham is not only the most popular of his novels, but it is probably the one best in literary quality, because it is so representative of the early realistic novel. 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. The Rise of Silas Lapham, the best-known novel of William Dean Howells, published in 1885.

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. William Dean Howells' richly humorous characterization of a self-made millionaire in Boston society provides a paradigm of American culture in the Gilded Age. Howellss Silas Lapham is a man of conscience who realizes his folly, but who is also an ambitious man who lets his aspirations lead him to hazard his fortune and his familys happiness for.

The rise of silas lapham by william dean howells