The Rise of Silas Lapham
- Author William Dean Howells
- Narrator Grover Gardner
- Publisher Blackstone Publishing
- Publish Date 15 March 2012
- Run Time 12 hours and 2 minutes
- Format Audio
- Genre Classic fiction, Fiction: general and literary.
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What to expect
Howells’ best-known work and a subtle classic of its time, The Rise of Silas Lapham is an elegant tale of Boston society and manners.
After garnering a fortune in the paint business, Silas Lapham moves his family from their Vermont farm to the city of Boston in order to improve his social position. The consequences of this endeavor are both humorous and tragic as the greedy Silas brings his company to the brink of bankruptcy.
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—and provides a paradigm of American culture in the Gilded Age.
Critics Review
“Mr. Howells has made a patient study of Boston people, and shows himself a delicate satirist…[An] able and thoroughly enjoyable novel.”
“A novel which no one can neglect who cares to understand American character…[Howells] has at last attained the mastery of narrative which we see in The Rise of Silas Lapham.”
“Silas Lapham is the most enjoyable of Howell’s Books to read and study.”
“[The Rise of Silas Lapham] is a book to read with a great deal of pleasure and to be laid down, after being read, with much disappointment.”
“Grover Gardner is one of America’s most popular
and versatile audiobook narrators and winner of an Audio Publishers Association
Audie Award. In this interesting period
piece, he does an excellent job voicing the characters with believable and
natural Boston and New England accents.
Gardner reads with just the right dramatic touch without overdoing it,
keeping the listener’s attention from beginning to end.”
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