num_pages: 352
description: William Dean Howells' richly humorous characterization of a self-made millionaire in Boston society provides a paradigm of American culture in the Gilded Age. After establishing a fortune in the paint business, Silas Lapham moves his family from their Vermont farm to the city of Boston, where they awkwardly attempt to break into Brahmin society. Silas, greedy for wealth as well as prestige, brings his company to the brink of bankruptcy, and the family is forced to return to Vermont, financially ruined but morally renewed. As Kermit Vanderbilt points out in his introduction, the novel focuses on important themes in the American literary the efficacy of self-help and determination, the ambiguous benefits of social and economic progress, and the continual contradiction between urban and pastoral values.
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: Signet Classics