ABSTRACT
The Rise of Silas Lapham is not a novel about writing of novels; none the less, one of its significant themes is the relationship between art and life, and in particular the way in which expectations of life can be conditioned by art. In William Dean Howells's view, just such a conditioning was evident in the America in which he was writing, with unfortunate results. James Bellingham's reference to idea, 'some years ago', that novels were going out, is problematical. What Howells has in mind is perhaps continuing strain in much orthodox moral and religious philosophy in the nineteenth century which saw novel-reading as a morally dangerous activity serving no useful or instructive purpose. Mr Sewell, clergyman who, as elsewhere in the novel, seems to voice Howells's own point of view, agrees that there is now a whole class of people for whom novels provide the sole source of intellectual sustenance; hence the importance of the quality of that sustenance.
