The Rise of Silas Lapham

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"The Rise of Silas Lapham" was the first important novel to center on the American businessman and the first to treat its theme with a realism that foreshadowed the work of modern writers. In his story of one of the millionaire industrialists who flourished in the post-Civil War years, William Dean Howells probes the moral and social conflicts that confront a self-made man trying to crash Boston's old-guard aristocracy. Silas Lapham is a man of conscience who fully realizes his folly; but he is also an ambitious man who lets his aspirations lead him to risk both his fortune and his family's happiness for status in a society that will never truly accept him. "His perceptions were sure, his integrity was absolute," wrote Henry Seidel Canby of William Dean Howells, whom he credited as being "responsible for giving the American novel form."

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William Dean Howells was born in Martins Ferry, Ohio, on March 1, 1837. Between 1856 and 1861 he worked as a reporter for the "Ohio State Journal." About this time his poems began to appear in "The Atlantic Monthly." His campaign biography of Abraham Lincoln, compiled in 1860, prompted the administration to offer him the consulship at Venice, a post he held from 1861 to 1865. He married Elinor Gertrude Meade, a young woman from Vermont, in Paris in 1862. On his return to the United States in 1865, Howells worked in New York before going to Boston as assistant to James T. Fields of "The Atlantic Monthly." In 1871 he became editor-in-chief of the magazine. In this position he worked with many young writers, among them Mark Twain and Henry James, both of whom became his close friends. His first novel, "Their Wedding Journey," appeared in 1872. "The Rise of Silas Lapham" was serialized in "Century Magazine" before it was published in book form in 1885. "A Hazard of New Fortunes" was published five years later. His position as critic, writer, and enthusiastic exponent of the new realism earned William Dean Howells the title of Dean of American Letters. He died in 1920. Louis Auchincloss was a highly acclaimed novelist, literary critic, and historian. His more than fifty books include "The Rector of Justin," "The House of Five Talents," and "The Atonement." He is also the author of several nonfiction works, including "The Man Behind""the Book: Literary Profiles," and a member and President Emeritus of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.