An Introduction to The Rise of Silas Lapham

Foreword

The following introduction is a slightly revised version of what I provided Oxford University Press for their World Classics series. At the time (1996) several editions already existed of The Rise of Silas Lapham (1885), the most frequently reprinted of W. D. Howells' thirty-odd novels. My hopes of grabbing some of their market share may well have been foolish, despite the backing of a prestigious international publisher.

Although I believed (and still do) that my introduction and notes compared favorably to those of the competition, the edition went out of print with breathtaking rapidity, and I learned a hard lesson about biblio-mortality in the current book trade. My take on Silas Lapham, whatever its merits, would forever be marooned in a soon-to-be-scarce paperback, steadily moving toward the oblivion shared by anything ever printed on acidic paper. Worse than the prospect of material disintegration was the humbling awareness that even before my work would be beyond recall, it was fated to be out of sight and therefore out of mind for younger Howells researchers.

Baby Boomers like me (b. 1945) have seemed to be more susceptible than other scholarly generations to the academic anxiety of influence, by which the aging professoriate goes notably underread and underrated by those just beginning their careers—more susceptible because of the electronic revolution, which changed how earlier work on any literary topic would henceforth be taken into account, if at all. Either such work was immediately identifiable in electronic databases or it was as good as non-existent.

There has been, moreover, a change in the code of scholarly courtesy and obligation, particularly in citations. I am not the only one to perceive that "old" work—that is, published before 2000—is unlikely to appear in the notes to contemporary articles, even in highly creditable journals. The "neglect" I am alleging does not, I hasten to say, represent a nefarious conspiracy of the young against the old. It stems not from malice, but rather from ignorance.

In my own students I perceive a bias, even a prejudice, against such "old" work; whereas I was taught that scholarly due diligence obliged one's attention to any meritorious work, no matter how long in the tooth. For example, as a very inexperienced Howellsian, I felt I needed to familiarize myself with the criticism as far back as the first book on Howells in 1917.

The best pioneering study by far was published in 1924 by Oscar W. Firkins of Harvard, a book that I still find serviceable as criticism, not only for the intelligence of Firkins' readings, but also for its reflection of early post-Victorian mores in the scholarly world, including entrenched assumptions about gender. Firkins' notion of "manliness" in Howells' characters, on which some of his interpretations turn, is possibly more faithful to Howells' own sensibility than mine—or that of anyone influenced by, say, feminism and modernism. My point is that something valuable may well have been lost to contemporary scholarship through the abbreviation of the scholarly canon.

It pains me, I admit, to know that my "old" introduction to The Rise of Silas Lapham, like those of the early Howellsians who taught me, has had little or no claim upon the attention of newer critics of the novel, including the authors of articles in this very journal, for which I have read some of the submissions on Howells for a long time. When assigned such articles or a review of a new book on Howells, I have tried tactfully to suggest how work, including my own, without internet cred might nevertheless be pertinent, leaving it entirely up to the author to heed (or not) such advice.

Of course, I have no such contact with authors of articles that do not cross my desk before publication in American Literary Realism. A couple of recent pieces, in fact, were the immediate impetus for the idea of recovering my lost introduction. Fairness demands, of course, an important concession: no one can reasonably be expected to have read something currently non-existent! But I hope my general...