New Essays on The Rise of Silas Lapham

The Rise of Silas Lapham (1885) established William Dean Howells’s reputation in the annals of American literature. This collection of essays argues the renewed importance of Howells’s novel for an understanding of literature as a social force as well as a literary form. In his introduction Donald Pease recounts the fall and rise of the novel’s value in literary history, outlines the various critical responses to Silas Lapham, and restores the novel to its social context. The essays that follow expand on this theme, challenging the accepted views of literary critics by explicating narrative methods and the genre of literary realism. Focusing much of its attention on economics of morality, manners, and pain, as well as the marketplace, the volume as a whole argues that a relationship exists between Howells’s realism and its socioeconomic context.

• An introductory guide to one of America’s nineteenth-century classics • The essays in this volume consider the various critical responses to the novel and restore it to its social context

Series editor’s preface; 1. Introduction Donald E. Pease; 2. Helpless longing, or, the lesson of Silas Lapham Paul A. Bové; 3. The hold in Howells/The lapse in Silas Lapham John Seelye; 4. The economy of pain: capitalism, humanitarianism and the realistic novel Wai-Chee Dimock; 5. Smiling through pain: the practice of self in The Rise of Silas Lapham Daniel T. O’Hara; 6. The Rise of Silas Lapham: the business of morals and manners James M. Cox; Notes on contributors; Selected bibliography.