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William Dean Howells : The Rise of Silas Lapham (The Penguin American Library)
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Author: William Dean Howells
Title: The Rise of Silas Lapham (The Penguin American Library)
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Published in: English
Binding: Paperback
Pages: 400
Date: 1983-04-28
ISBN: 0140390308
Publisher: Penguin Classics
Weight: 0.57 pounds
Size: 0.7 x 5.09 x 7.73 inches
Edition: 0
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Description: Product 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 tradition: the efficacy of self-help and determination, the ambiguous benefits of social and economic progress, and the continual contradiction between urban and pastoral values.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
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