The Rise of Silas Lapham (Wordsworth American Classics) - Softcover

Howells, William D.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1853265667 ISBN 13: 9781853265662

Publisher: Wordsworth Editions Ltd, 1995

Synopsis

This work is an account of Boston Brahmin society and the incursion into that rarefied world of Colonel Silas Lapham of Vermont, and his wife and two daughters. As the family advances further into Boston society, difficulties begin to arise, exacerbated by the Colonel's business problems.

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: Wordsworth Editions Ltd
• Publication date: 1995
• ISBN 10: 1853265667
• ISBN 13: 9781853265662
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 368