A study guide for William Dean Howells' "The Rise of Silas Lapham"

By Gale and Cengage

A study guide for William Dean Howells' "The Rise of Silas Lapham", excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Novels for Students series. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Novels for Students for all of your research needs.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cengage Learning - Gale
• Release date: May 2, 2016
• ISBN: 9781535843119

Book preview

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The Rise of Silas Lapham

William Dean Howells

1885

Introduction

William Dean Howells, a prolific writer in a variety of genres, published one of his best-known works, The Rise of Silas Lapham, in 1885. A work of realistic fiction, the novel explores Bostonian society and the figure of the American businessman. Howells features two prominent Boston families in the novel, the Laphams, originally hailing from Vermont, and the Coreys, an upper-class, well-established Bostonian family. While contrasting the characters of Silas Lapham, who has earned his wealth by building his mineral paint business from the ground up, and Bromfield Corey, who has inherited his wealth and his high social standing, Howells crafts a romantic tale that centers on the young-adult children of the two men. Business ethics and the pangs of young love are intertwined in a story that simultaneously investigates the intricacies of social class in late-nineteenth-century Bostonian society.

The Rise of Silas Lapham was originally published in 1885. It is available in several modern editions, including the 1982 edition published by the Library of America.

Author Biography

Howells, the second of eight children, was born on March 1, 1837, in Martins Ferry, Ohio, to Mary Dean Howells and William Cooper Howells. During his childhood, Howells worked as an assistant typesetter on his father's paper, the Hamilton Intelligencer, after the family moved to Hamilton, Ohio. That paper failed, as did a second one Howells's father began. Howells's father also sought to establish a utopian commune, but the endeavor was abandoned in 1850 because of lack of financial support. For the next several years, the Howells family moved around the state, as the elder Howells followed employment leads in the publishing world. In 1853, with his father settled, sixteen-year-old Howells worked as a printer for the Ashtabula Sentinel and began to teach himself several languages.

In the years that followed, Howells began to write and publish as a journalist and essayist and embarked on a career as a novelist and poet as well. After writing a campaign biography for Abraham Lincoln in 1860, Howells was appointed to the US consulate in Venice by President Lincoln in 1861. Howells served in Venice until 1865. He married Elinor Mead in Paris in 1862.

After his return to the United States, Howells settled in Cambridge in 1866, where he became an assistant editor of the Atlantic, publishing fiction and literary criticism, including his first novel, Their Wedding Journey (1872). He resigned the editorship in 1881. Howells continued to write works of realist fiction, including The Rise of Silas Lapham in 1885, Indian Summer in 1886, The Minister's Charge in 1886, Annie Kilburn in 1888, and A Hazard of New Fortunes in 1890. In the early 1900s, Howells traveled extensively. His wife died in 1910, after which Howells continued to travel and to publish fiction and nonfiction, including travel literature, such as the 1913 Familiar Spanish Travels. Howells died of pneumonia on May 11, 1920, in New York.

Plot Summary

Chapter I

Howells introduces the protagonist of The Rise of Silas