William Dean Howells (1837–1920)

William Dean Howells was born in 1837 and wrote prolifically until his death in 1920. The Rise of Silas Lapham is likely the best remembered, and most often read, of his works. It is a humorous novel with twin, intertwined plots. The first of business and social success, and then failure, in Gilded Age Boston. The other a love farce, and a commentary on ideas of romance in then current novels.

The book starts out slowly with a magazine writer interviewing Silas Lapham about his rise to success. Silas has had the good fortune of having a “paint mine” on his farm in Vermont, from which he’s been able to produce paint of such high quality that it has made him a fortune. The interview gambit serves to introduce the main characters and set up some of the tension that will play out through the book. After that slow start the plots start boiling.

The nouveau riche Laphams have relocated to Boston, and, owing to their country ways, they’ve stayed to themselves and haven’t tried to climb the social ladder to Boston’s high society. That all changes when a young man from a well established family seems to take an interest in one of their two daughters, and then flatters Silas by asking to come to work for him.

What follows is a series of misunderstandings, both in business and in love, between the honest country bred Laphams and the Boston Brahmins they find themselves mixing with.

The book stands the test of time. The language is perhaps formal, but not too formal. The style is perhaps dated, but not too dated. The humor comes through clearly. I often had a smile on my face as I raced through the pages. There are things going on in this book that make it “important” enough that it is still taught in some classrooms. But it is very accessible and easy to read as entertainment.

Reading this today, in 2022, with its young lovers and its social climbing, the whole thing struck me as being kind of an American version of Bridgerton (the TV show - I’ve not read the book). Or perhaps Bridgerton, being the later creation, is a British version of Silas Lapham. I guess the comparison is inevitable for a male reader like me, as Howells is often seen as a “women’s writer”.

As is true today, the primary audience for fiction in the 1880s was women. Howells knew that, and that is likely why he's given a prominent role to Silas's wife Persis Lapham. She is both a moral guide in business to her husband (and an equal partner in the early years), and the one the family looks to for guidance through the thicket of etiquette and expectation in Boston society. She is a fully fledged, complex character with both strengths and flaws.

Howells was also known as a “realist”. As to his place in American writing, he is sometimes said to fall between Mark Twain and Henry James. He was friends with both. James said of him that “[h]e adores the real, the natural, the colloquial, the moderate, the optimistic, the domestic, and the democratic...” That sensibility is, I think, the main reason this book has held up so well.

It doesn’t feel right to me to put Star ratings on classics like this. I recommend this book. I found that I liked it a lot more than I thought I would. “Silas Lapham” sounds like such an old-fashioned name that it does the book it's attached to a disservice. The book holds up much better than that old-fashioned name.… (lisätietoja)