George Lippard, prophet of protest

The fiery Philadelphia novelist and social reformer George Lippard was a respected friend of Poe, the founder of a nationwide labor organization, and a prolific author whose lurid exposé The Monks of Monk Hall (l845) was the most popular novel written by an American before the appearance of Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin. Lippard's writings, long neglected, are valuable documents of America's literary history, radical thought, and popular culture. The present volume, with a penetrating historical introduction and notes by David S. Reynolds, offers a rich sampling of Lippard's works, most of which are here reprinted for the first time since their original publication in the nineteenth century. Included are several hitherto unpublished pieces on Poe; Lippard's most important working-class writings, many of which are similar in spirit to those of his German contemporary Karl Marx; trenchant commentary on a wide variety of nineteenth-century social and literary currents; Lippard's most influential historical writings, including the famous Liberty Bell legend; and fictional passages in which Lippard experiments with dream imagery, the grotesque, and the erotic.