Street in Boston. The Rise of Silas Lapham was first serialized in The Century Magazine beginning in 1884, the same year that the magazine also serialized The Bostonians by Henry James and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, two other important examples of literary realism. The magazine's editor, Richard Watson Gilder, was concerned about any descriptions of violence, however, especially after recent anarchist activity, and asked Howells to edit a line that was originally as a character noting his desire of "applying dynamite to those rows of close-shuttered, handsome, brutally insensitive houses". Analysis Historian Francis Parkman, a contemporary of Howells's, had difficulty understanding the realism of the book. He instead judged it by his more romantic standards and sought a didactic purpose for the story. As he wrote, "It is an admirable portraiture, realistic in the best sense of the word. It must touch the consciousness of a great many people; and as we descendants of the Puritans are said to be always on the lookout for a moral — it will teach the much needed lesson that money cannot do everything." Historian Scott E. Casper suggested that The Rise of Silas Lapham was partly a satire on contemporary biography conventions. Howells, who had written a campaign biography of Abraham Lincoln, attacked the formulaic style of biographies of the day, including the "rise" from early adversity to later success. Howells emphasized this early in the book where Lapham is interviewed by Bartley Hubbard (a character revived from his 1882 novel A Modern Instance) who interjects while his subject tells his life story with assumptions of his romanticized life. Further, the title character is excessively class-conscious and worries about being humiliated for not fitting in with the culture of wealthy Boston, as exemplified in a scene where he struggles to determine if it is appropriate to wear gloves to a particular event, but refuses to ask for help. References External links Rise of Silas Lapham 1912 edition, Houghton Mifflin, from Google Books Was Silas Lapham a Farmer? Commentary at A Noble Theme Works by William Dean Howells Novels set in Boston 1885 American novels Realist novels