Status
Available
Call number
Genres
Collection
Publication
Signet Classics (1983), Paperback, 352 pages
Description
Classic Literature. Fiction. HTML: William Dean Howells' 1885 novel, The Rise of Silas Lapham tells the story of its protagonist's materialistic aspirations; his rise from rags to riches. Despite making a fortune in business, Silas feels he lacks social position; he banks on the marriage of his daughter to an aristocratic family to change this. But Silas faces a moral quandary when his business partner suggests dodgy business dealings..
User reviews
LibraryThing member evanroskos
This book is worth reading simply because of the structure -- it is perfectly symmetrical. there is an epiphany at the exact center and the opening and closing chapters are two different confessions -- one public, one private. It's an amazing work, though most people don't read it at this point.
LibraryThing member stevesbookstuff
William Dean Howells was born in 1837 and wrote prolifically until his death in 1920. The Rise of Silas Lapham is likely the best remembered, and most often read, of his works. It is a humorous novel with twin, intertwined plots. The first of business and social success, and then failure, in Gilded
The book starts out slowly with a magazine writer interviewing Silas Lapham about his rise to success. Silas has had the good fortune of having a “paint mine” on his farm in Vermont, from which he’s been able to produce paint of such high quality that it has made him a fortune. The interview gambit serves to introduce the main characters and set up some of the tension that will play out through the book. After that slow start the plots start boiling.
The nouveau riche Laphams have relocated to Boston, and, owing to their country ways, they’ve stayed to themselves and haven’t tried to climb the social ladder to Boston’s high society. That all changes when a young man from a well established family seems to take an interest in one of their two daughters, and then flatters Silas by asking to come to work for him.
What follows is a series of misunderstandings, both in business and in love, between the honest country bred Laphams and the Boston Brahmins they find themselves mixing with.
The book stands the test of time. The language is perhaps formal, but not too formal. The style is perhaps dated, but not too dated. The humor comes through clearly. I often had a smile on my face as I raced through the pages. There are things going on in this book that make it “important” enough that it is still taught in some classrooms. But it is very accessible and easy to read as entertainment.
Reading this today, in 2022, with its young lovers and its social climbing, the whole thing struck me as being kind of an American version of Bridgerton (the TV show - I’ve not read the book). Or perhaps Bridgerton, being the later creation, is a British version of Silas Lapham. I guess the comparison is inevitable for a male reader like me, as Howells is often seen as a “women’s writer”.
As is true today, the primary audience for fiction in the 1880s was women. Howells knew that, and that is likely why he's given a prominent role to Silas's wife Persis Lapham. She is both a moral guide in business to her husband (and an equal partner in the early years), and the one the family looks to for guidance through the thicket of etiquette and expectation in Boston society. She is a fully fledged, complex character with both strengths and flaws.
Howells was also known as a “realist”. As to his place in American writing, he is sometimes said to fall between Mark Twain and Henry James. He was friends with both. James said of him that “[h]e adores the real, the natural, the colloquial, the moderate, the optimistic, the domestic, and the democratic...” That sensibility is, I think, the main reason this book has held up so well.
It doesn’t feel right to me to put Star ratings on classics like this. I recommend this book. I found that I liked it a lot more than I thought I would. “Silas Lapham” sounds like such an old-fashioned name that it does the book it's attached to a disservice. The book holds up much better than that old-fashioned name.
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Age Boston. The other a love farce, and a commentary on ideas of romance in then current novels.The book starts out slowly with a magazine writer interviewing Silas Lapham about his rise to success. Silas has had the good fortune of having a “paint mine” on his farm in Vermont, from which he’s been able to produce paint of such high quality that it has made him a fortune. The interview gambit serves to introduce the main characters and set up some of the tension that will play out through the book. After that slow start the plots start boiling.
The nouveau riche Laphams have relocated to Boston, and, owing to their country ways, they’ve stayed to themselves and haven’t tried to climb the social ladder to Boston’s high society. That all changes when a young man from a well established family seems to take an interest in one of their two daughters, and then flatters Silas by asking to come to work for him.
What follows is a series of misunderstandings, both in business and in love, between the honest country bred Laphams and the Boston Brahmins they find themselves mixing with.
The book stands the test of time. The language is perhaps formal, but not too formal. The style is perhaps dated, but not too dated. The humor comes through clearly. I often had a smile on my face as I raced through the pages. There are things going on in this book that make it “important” enough that it is still taught in some classrooms. But it is very accessible and easy to read as entertainment.
Reading this today, in 2022, with its young lovers and its social climbing, the whole thing struck me as being kind of an American version of Bridgerton (the TV show - I’ve not read the book). Or perhaps Bridgerton, being the later creation, is a British version of Silas Lapham. I guess the comparison is inevitable for a male reader like me, as Howells is often seen as a “women’s writer”.
As is true today, the primary audience for fiction in the 1880s was women. Howells knew that, and that is likely why he's given a prominent role to Silas's wife Persis Lapham. She is both a moral guide in business to her husband (and an equal partner in the early years), and the one the family looks to for guidance through the thicket of etiquette and expectation in Boston society. She is a fully fledged, complex character with both strengths and flaws.
Howells was also known as a “realist”. As to his place in American writing, he is sometimes said to fall between Mark Twain and Henry James. He was friends with both. James said of him that “[h]e adores the real, the natural, the colloquial, the moderate, the optimistic, the domestic, and the democratic...” That sensibility is, I think, the main reason this book has held up so well.
It doesn’t feel right to me to put Star ratings on classics like this. I recommend this book. I found that I liked it a lot more than I thought I would. “Silas Lapham” sounds like such an old-fashioned name that it does the book it's attached to a disservice. The book holds up much better than that old-fashioned name.
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LibraryThing member jwhenderson
Reading William Dean Howells' fine novel, The Rise of Silas Lapham, is an enjoyable experience. With a balanced structure in the classical manner, his lucid prose and fine attention to detail almost caress the reader. The deftly woven plot and sub-plots highlight the "rise" of Lapham in a moral
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sense even while his material fortunes deteriorate. The female characters, especially Lapham's daughter Penelope, are well written and rival portrayals of women by such novelists as Eliot and Wharton. This is the first of major American novels of business, to be followed by those of Norris (The Octopus), Dreiser (The Financier) and Lewis (Babbit) among others. Howells sets his novel apart with his positive view of New England ideals and business itself. It is no wonder that this book has continuously been in print and is considered one the great works of American literature. Show Less
LibraryThing member jimsnopes
The Wednesday morning Keele 'Continuing and Professional Education' class today featured The Rise of Silas Lapham (1885). Hard going to read this for me, but rewarding on looking back at and through it with the group. I decided Howells - or at least as evidenced in this book - was a bit of a
Too long, many thought, but this may be a function of such works being first published in serialised form.
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leftie, if not even an armchair Marxist. This last paragraph from the book seems to convey the conditions/consciousness dialectic of Marxism, as Silas reflects on whether he has any regrets: "About what I done? Well, it don't always seem as if I done it...Seems sometimes as if it was a hole opened for me, and I crept out of it. I don't know... as I should always say it paid; but if I done it, and the thing was to do over again, right in the same way, I guess I should have to do it." An excellent study of social class, with observations through his characters' actions and thoughts that are as recognisable in today's society as they evidently were in the Boston of the 1880s.Too long, many thought, but this may be a function of such works being first published in serialised form.
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LibraryThing member corinneblackmer
Silas Lapham, a decorated former officer in the Civil War, makes a fortune in the Civil War, but, because of his countrified manners, has difficulties in introducing himself and his daughters (who must marry) into cultivated society in Boston. One daughter does make a match with a wealthy and
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cultivated son of the Corey family; however, when Lapham has the chance to make another fortune through the sale of his now failing paint company to some English speculators, he refuses to do so, and therefore shows his moral fiber. However, it is pertinent in this regard that the family has a farm in New Hampshire to which to repair, and which Mrs. Lapham prefers to Boston society. Show Less
LibraryThing member mahallett
sort of boring. definitely masculine old style.
Subjects
Awards
Language
Original publication date
1885
Physical description
352 p.; 6.9 inches
ISBN
0451524969 / 9780451524966
Other editions
The Rise of Silas Lapham by William Dean Howells (Paperback)