William Dean Howells

William Dean Howells - editor of The Atlantic and the most powerful literary man in America - made his masterpiece a study not of romance but of business ethics. Silas Lapham, a rough, self-made paint millionaire from Vermont, builds a grand house on the fashionable side of Beacon Street only to find that Boston's old families will take his money but never his daughters, while a crisis in his affairs forces a reckoning with his own honesty.
This edition presents the complete and unabridged novel, newly typeset and illustrated with 50 full-page color plates, Sargent's Boston among them.