William Dean Howells, whose literary career began on the eve of the Civil War and ended after World War I, is one of the three most important American writers of the late nineteenth century. Samuel Langhorne Clemens and Henry James, both of whom were his...

William Dean Howells , whose literary career began on the eve of the Civil War and ended after World War I, is one of the three most important American writers of the late nineteenth century. Samuel Clemens and Henry James, both of whom were his close fr...

William Dean Howells combined a career as an important novelist with that of a journalist. As editor of The Atlantic Monthly and later as author of, or contributor to, the "Editor's Study" and "Editor's Easy Chair" columns in Harper's Monthly, he was an...

The Rise of Silas Lapham Excerpts from The Rise of Silas Lapham By William Dean Howells Originally published in 1885 Reprinted by Signet Classic in 2002 William Dean Howells (1837–1920) was a journalist, a well-known literary critic, and a...

The Rise of Silas Lapham is a novel written by William Dean Howells in 1885 about the materialistic rise of Silas Lapham from rags to riches, and his ensuing moral susceptibility. Silas earns a fortune in the paint business, but he lacks social...

The Rise of Silas Lapham. By William Dean Howells. New York: Signet Classic by New American Library, 1980. 350 pp. Paper. ISBN: 0-45151400-9. First published in 1885 by Ticknor and Company. Reviewed by Pamela Walker Laird Decades of digging in archives, ancient...

The author examine novelist William Dean Howells' The Rise of Silas Lapham. Topics include narrative storytelling ability, portrayal of ethics, and heroism. A keen sense of the ethical in both its personal and social aspects gave William Dean Howells's editorial commentary and fiction...