The Rise of Silas Laphamby William Dean Howells | |
| List(s): | "Carp 500" |
|---|---|
| Category: |
"Fiction - General" |
| Pages: | 347 |
| Year of Publication: | 1885 |
| Date Read: | 11/19/1996 |
| Notes: | The story of Yankee businessman, Silas Lapham — one of the millionaires who flourished with the expanding industrialization of the post-Civil War years. Lapham attempts to crash Boston’s old-guard, aristocratic society. He is an ambitious man who lets his aspirations lead him to hazard both his fortune and his family’s happiness, but he’s also a man of conscience who fully realizes his folly. COMMENTS — In 1860, William Dean Howells wrote a campaign biography of Abraham Lincoln. In 1887, risking his life and reputation, he made a public plea for clemency for the condemned Haymarket anarchists, a group of labor leaders who were convicted of murder after a violent riot in Chicago. |
| My Rating: | 8 |