The Rise of Silas Lapham (VINTAGE BOOKS/THE LIBRARY OF AMERICA) - Softcover

Howells, William Dean

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0679725172 ISBN 13: 9780679725176

Publisher: Vintage Books, 1991

Synopsis

Mr. Howells has written a long series of poems, novels, sketches, stories, and essays, and has been perhaps the most continuous worker in the literary art among American writers. He was born at Martin s Ferry, Belmont County, Ohio, March 1, 1837, and the experiences of his early life have been delightfully told by himself in AB oy s Town, My Year in a Log Cabin, and My Literary Passions. These books, which seem like pastimes in the midst of Howells sserious work, are likely to live long, not only as playful autobiographic records, but as vivid pictures of life in the middle west in the middle of the nineteenth century. The boy lived in a home where frugality was the law of economy, but where high ideals of noble living were cheerfully maintained, and the very occupations of the household tended to stimulate literary activity. He read voraciously and with an instinctive scent for what was great and permanent in literature, and in his fathers printing-office learned to set type, and soon to make contributions to the local journals. He went to the state Capitol to report the proceedings of the legislature, and before he was twenty-two had become news editor of the State Journal of Columbus, Ohio.
(Typographical errors above are due to OCR software and don't occur in the book.)

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About this title

Review

"Good to have a high quality, affordable paperback edition of this foundational text of the American realist movement."--Phillip Barrish, University of Texas at Austin
"An excellent edition, clearly printed."--Dan Fineman, Occidental College
"Good to have a high quality, affordable paperback edition of this foundational text of the American realist movement."--Phillip Barrish, University of Texas at Austin
"An excellent edition, clearly printed."--Dan Fineman, Occidental College
"Good to have a high quality, affordable paperback edition of this foundational text of the American realist movement."--Phillip Barrish, University of Texas at Austin
"An excellent edition, clearly printed."--Dan Fineman, Occidental College

About the Author

William Dean Howells ( 1837–1920) was an American realist author and literary critic. He was known for the Christmas story Christmas Every Day and for the novel The Rise of Silas Lapham. Howells also wrote plays, criticism, and essays about contemporary literary figures such as Henrik Ibsen, Émile Zola, Giovanni Verga, Benito Pérez Galdós, and, especially, Leo Tolstoy, which helped establish their reputations in the United States. He also wrote critically in support of American writers Hamlin Garland, Stephen Crane, Emily Dickinson, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Sarah Orne Jewett, Charles W. Chesnutt, Abraham Cahan, and Frank Norris. It is perhaps in this role that he had his greatest influence. In his "Editor's Study" column at the Atlantic Monthly and, later, at Harper's, he formulated and disseminated his theories of "realism" in literature. In defense of the real, as opposed to the ideal, Howells is quoted as saying, "I hope the time is coming when not only the artist, but the common, average man, who always 'has the standard of the arts in his power,' will have also the courage to apply it, and will reject the ideal grasshopper wherever he finds it, in science, in literature, in art, because it is not 'simple, natural, and honest,' because it is not like a real grasshopper. But I will own that I think the time is yet far off, and that the people who have been brought up on the ideal grasshopper, the heroic grasshopper, the impassioned grasshopper, the self-devoted, adventureful, good old romantic card-board grasshopper, must die out before the simple, honest, and natural grasshopper can have a fair field."

About this edition

• Publisher: Vintage Books
• Publication date: 1991
• ISBN 10: 0679725172
• ISBN 13: 9780679725176
• Binding: Paperback