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Shop nowThe Rise of Silas Lapham
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Learn moreHowells’ 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.
William Dean Howells (1837–1920) was an American realist author and literary critic. Nicknamed “the Dean of American Letters,” he was particularly known for his tenure as editor of the Atlantic Monthly as well as his own writings, including the Christmas story “Christmas Every Day” and the novel The Rise of Silas Lapham. He is known as the father of American realism. In 1915, he was awarded the American Academy of Arts and Letters Gold Medal for Fiction.
Grover Gardner has recorded more than 650 audiobooks since beginning his career in 1981. He's been named one of the "Best Voices of the Century" as well as a "Golden Voice" by AudioFile magazine. Gardner has garnered over 20 AudioFile Earphones Awards and is the recipient of an Audio Publishers Association Audie Award, as well as a three-time finalist. In 2005, Publishers Weekly deemed him "Audiobook Narrator of the Year."
Gardner has also narrated hundreds of audiobooks under the names Tom Parker and Alexander Adams. Among his many titles are Marcus Sakey's At the City's Edge, as well as Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, Mark Twain's The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, and John Irving's The Cider House Rules. Gardner studied Theater and Art History at Rollins College and received a Master's degree in Acting from George Washington University. He lives in Oregon with his significant other and daughter.
Reviews
“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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