William Dean Howells

William Dean Howells (1837-1920) was born in 1837 in Martins Ferry, Ohio, one of ten children to editor and printer, William Cooper Howells. William's early education in the printing office led him to a job as a compositor on the "Ohio State Journal" at age fourteen, and a successful career as an author by his early twenties. His notoriety comes...

"The Rise of Silas Lapham" is William Dean Howells 1885 novel which tells the story of its title character, who inherits his father's paint business and subsequently makes a great deal of money. Silas moves his family from rural Vermont to Boston in order to try and improve his social position. The consequences of which are both humorous and...

“The Rise of Silas Lapham” is William Dean Howells’ 1885 novel which tells the story of its title character, who inherits his father’s paint business and subsequently makes a great deal of money. Silas moves his family from their home in rural Vermont to Boston in order to try and improve his social position. The consequences of his ambitions for...

Nicknamed the "Dean of American Letters," William Dean Howells was a remarkable literary figure. A novelist, critic, and playwright, he forged friendships with luminaries such as Mark Twain, Henry James, and Oliver Wendell Holmes. Though Howells is best known for his East Coast novels The Rise of Silas Lampham and A Hazard of New Fortunes , he...

The Story of a Country Town is both a pioneering triumph of realistic fiction and a landmark in the development of American literature. Written at night after a hard day’s work as editor and publisher of an evening newspaper in Aitchison, Kansas, this novel represents a retreat from the nineteenth-century romantic image of rural life in the...