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conversations.value: Give me a description for a story titled The Rise of Silas Lapham about [the, Henry, Seidel with the genre: Literature & Fiction, History & Criticism.
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conversations.value: "[the author's] perceptions were sure, his integrity was absolute." Henry Seidel Canby
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conversations.value: Give me a plot for a story about [the, Henry, Seidel.
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conversations.value: The Rise of Silas Lapham: The novel begins with Silas Lapham being interviewed for a newspaper profile, during which he explains his financial success in the mineral paint business.\nThe Lapham family is somewhat self-conscious in their sudden rise on the social ladder and often fumble in their attempts at following etiquette norms.\nThey decide to build a new home in the fashionable Back Bay neighborhood, and Lapham spares no expense ensuring it is at the height of fashion.\nTom Corey, a young man from a well-respected high-class family, shows an interest in the Lapham girls; mr and mrs Lapham assume he is attracted to Irene, the beautiful younger daughter.\nCorey joins the Lapham's paint business in an attempt to find his place in the world, rather than rely on the savings of his father, Bromfield Corey.\nWhen Tom Corey begins calling on the Laphams regularly, everyone assumes his interest in Irene has grown, and Irene takes a fancy to him.\nCorey, however, astounds both families by revealing his love for Penelope, the elder, more plain-looking, but more intelligent daughter who possesses an unusual sense of humor, a sophisticated literary passion, and a sensible but inquiring mind.\nThough Penelope has feelings for Tom Corey, she is held back by the romantic conventions of the era, not wanting to act on her love for fear of betraying her sister.\nSilas Lapham's former business partner Milton Rogers reappears in his life, asking for money for a series of schemes.\nmrs Lapham urges her husband to support the man, whom he had pushed out of the paint company in what was deemed an inappropriate manner.\nLapham's dealings with Rogers, however, result in a substantial financial loss.\nHis major asset, the new home on Beacon Street, burns down before its completion.\nThe Laphams are humbly forced to move to their ancestral home in the countryside, where the mineral paint was first developed.
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conversations.value: Delete the first sentence.
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conversations.value: \nThe Lapham family is somewhat self-conscious in their sudden rise on the social ladder and often fumble in their attempts at following etiquette norms.\nThey decide to build a new home in the fashionable Back Bay neighborhood, and Lapham spares no expense ensuring it is at the height of fashion.\nTom Corey, a young man from a well-respected high-class family, shows an interest in the Lapham girls; mr and mrs Lapham assume he is attracted to Irene, the beautiful younger daughter.\nCorey joins the Lapham's paint business in an attempt to find his place in the world, rather than rely on the savings of his father, Bromfield Corey.\nWhen Tom Corey begins calling on the Laphams regularly, everyone assumes his interest in Irene has grown, and Irene takes a fancy to him.\nCorey, however, astounds both families by revealing his love for Penelope, the elder, more plain-looking, but more intelligent daughter who possesses an unusual sense of humor, a sophisticated literary passion, and a sensible but inquiring mind.\nThough Penelope has feelings for Tom Corey, she is held back by the romantic conventions of the era, not wanting to act on her love for fear of betraying her sister.\nSilas Lapham's former business partner Milton Rogers reappears in his life, asking for money for a series of schemes.\nmrs Lapham urges her husband to support the man, whom he had pushed out of the paint company in what was deemed an inappropriate manner.\nLapham's dealings with Rogers, however, result in a substantial financial loss.\nHis major asset, the new home on Beacon Street, burns down before its completion.\nThe Laphams are humbly forced to move to their ancestral home in the countryside, where the mineral paint was first developed.
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conversations.value: Give me the first five paragraphs for this story.
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conversations.value: The Rise of Silas Lapham
  He did not continue, and after a while Sewell said, with that subtle kindness of his, "I should be inclined to think—nothing can be thrown quite away; and it can't be that our sins only weaken us—that your fear of having possibly behaved selfishly toward this man kept you on your guard, and strengthened you when you were brought face to face with a greater"—he was going to say temptation, but he saved Lapham's pride, and said—"emergency."
  As Sewell afterwards told his wife, he could see that the loss of his fortune had been a terrible trial to Lapham, just because his prosperity had been so gross and palpable; and he had now a burning desire to know exactly how, at the bottom of his heart, Lapham still felt. "And do you ever have any regrets?" he delicately inquired of him.
  It was something that Mrs. Lapham especially submitted to her husband when they got home; she asked him if it were true, and if it made any difference.
  Mrs. Lapham thought the facts over a few moments. "Well, what do we care, so long as we're comfortable in our home? And they're just as nice and as good neighbors as can be."
  In (1885), William Dean Howells captured the essence of the self-made businessman at a time when such men and their families were rising in prominence in American society. Nineteenth-century America, unencumbered by a titled aristocracy and invigorated by the notion that all men are created equal, was a fertile ground for plucky upstarts trying to transcend modest economic origins. In the March 1917 issue of the Atlantic Monthly, Wilson and Helen Thomas Follett heralded Silas Lapham as the prototypical self-made man:
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conversations.value: Give me four more paragraphs.
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conversations.value: With all his deficiencies, Howells is one of the decisive figures in the development of our literary culture. The meaning of his career it is no longer possible to neglect or belittle: he was the first of our important imaginative writers thoughtfully to consider and intelligently to comprehend what was happening to the form and quality of American life as it moved away from the simplicity, the social fluidity, the relative freedoms, of the mid-century towards the ugly disharmonies of monopolism and empire.
  Barrish, Phillip. American Literary Realism: Critical Theory and Intellectual Prestige, 1880-1995. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Shifting critical understanding and judgments of American realism.
  Bell, Michael Davitt. The Problem of American Realism: Studies in the Cultural History of a Literary Idea. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993. An essential study of American realism.
  Borus, Daniel. Writing Realism: Howells, James, and Norris in the Mass Market. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989. The realist in the literary marketplace.
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conversations.value: Delete the first sentence.
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conversations.value: The meaning of his career it is no longer possible to neglect or belittle: he was the first of our important imaginative writers thoughtfully to consider and intelligently to comprehend what was happening to the form and quality of American life as it moved away from the simplicity, the social fluidity, the relative freedoms, of the mid-century towards the ugly disharmonies of monopolism and empire.
  Barrish, Phillip. American Literary Realism: Critical Theory and Intellectual Prestige, 1880-1995. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Shifting critical understanding and judgments of American realism.
  Bell, Michael Davitt. The Problem of American Realism: Studies in the Cultural History of a Literary Idea. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993. An essential study of American realism.
  Borus, Daniel. Writing Realism: Howells, James, and Norris in the Mass Market. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989. The realist in the literary marketplace.
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conversations.value: Give me the last five paragraphs.
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conversations.value: Gilbert Stuart Newton (1794-1835), fashionable portrait painter, nephew of Gilbert Stuart, the portrait painter best known for his images of George Washington.
  School was an 1869 play by the popular British playwright Thomas William Robert-son. Inkerman was the site near Savastopol of an 1854 battle in the Crimean War.
  Cornelius Vanderbilt (1794-1877), Jay Gould (1836-1892), and Thomas Scott (1823-1881) were fabulously wealthy robber barons of the Gilded Age.
  Colonel Sellers (1874), with Sellers as a grand speculator, was a popular play Mark Twain adapted from his satire The Gilded Age ( 18 7 3 ). Twain and Howells collaborated on an unsuccessful sequel.
  Reference, from the Bible, to Jacob's nightlong wrestling with an angel until he receives its blessing (Genesis 32:24-29).