Sign-In
Cart
The Rise of Silas Lapham
Paperback
Classic FictionHistorical FictionLiterary Fiction
ISBN13: 9781420966558
Publisher: Digireads.Com
Published: Feb 6 2020
Pages: 262
Weight: 0.74
Height: 0.59 Width: 5.50 Depth: 8.50
Language: English
The Rise of Silas Lapham is William Dean Howells' 1885 novel which tells the story of its title character, who inherits his father's paint business and subsequently makes a great deal of money. Silas moves his family from their home in rural Vermont to Boston in order to try and improve his social position. The consequences of his ambitions for his family are both humorous and tragic. He attempts to see his younger and lovelier daughter married off to an aristocratic Boston family as a way to gain entry into the higher social strata, but his manipulations do not go as planned. Silas also gets involved in dubious business schemes that result in the loss of most of his fortune and the family is forced to move back to their country home, though Silas is able to preserve his morality even as he loses his wealth. Howells is often considered the father of American realism and he denounced the romanticism so often found in novels of his era. The Rise of Silas Lapham shows that Howells earned his reputation fairly in this unflinching portrayal of wealth, social hierarchy, and the vast gulf that can exist between city and country values. This edition is printed on premium acid-free paper.
22 different editions
Also available
Also in
Literary Fiction
The Torrents of Spring: A Romantic Novel in Honor of the Passing of a Great Race
Hemingway, Ernest
Hardcover
The Patrick Melrose Novels: Never Mind, Bad News, Some Hope, and Mother's Milk
St Aubyn, Edward
Paperback
Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution
Kuang, R. F.
Paperback