num_pages: 186
description: The Rise of Silas Lapham is Howell's best-known work, and this elegant tale of Boston society and manners is rightly regarded as a subtle classic of its time. Silas Lapham inherits his father's paint business, from which he makes a great deal of money, and moves his family from rural Vermont to cosmopolitan Boston. Attempting to break into the city's sophisticated society he becomes bent on the acquisition of both money and social position. Howells contrasts "old" and "new" money, presenting the representatives of both sympathetically and portraying the attempts of the self-made man to break into the world inhabited by those from "established" families with humor and delicacy.
language: English
title: The Rise of Silas Lapham
titlecomplete: The Rise of Silas Lapham
characters: Tom Corey, Mr. Sewell, Mrs. Lapham, Penelope Lapham, Irene Lapham, Bromfield Corey, Silas Lapham
genres: Classics, College, Fiction, Novels, Read For School, School, Historical Fiction, Literature, 19th Century, American
ratings_count: 4005
places: Massachusetts, Vermont, Boston, Massachusetts
publisher: Pearson College Div