George Lippard
George Lippard was a 19th-century American writer and journalist born on April 10, 1822, in rural Pennsylvania. His early life was marked by family upheaval, which influenced his critical perspective on social issues. After a brief stint in theological studies, he pursued journalism, where he found a platform to address the moral and social injustices of his time. Lippard gained prominence with his novel *The Quaker City: Or, The Monks of Monk Hall*, which explored the seedy underbelly of Philadelphia's upper class, ultimately becoming a bestseller despite (or due to) its controversial content.
Throughout his career, Lippard passionately advocated for women's rights, prisoner rights, and abolition, aligning himself with the early labor movement and promoting ideals of socialism. He founded The Brotherhood of the Union in 1849, focusing on wide-ranging social reforms, including the rights of marginalized groups. Unfortunately, Lippard's life was cut short when he succumbed to tuberculosis at the age of thirty-two on February 9, 1854. Despite his brief career, Lippard's work and activism left a lasting impact, highlighting the moral complexities of society and calling for reform.
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George Lippard
Writer
- Born: April 10, 1822
- Birthplace: Yellow Springs, Pennsylvania
- Died: February 9, 1854
- Place of death: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Biography
George Lippard was born in rural Pennsylvania some forty miles outside Philadelphia on April 10, 1822. His parents relocated to Philadelphia in 1824, leaving Lippard and his five sisters with relatives who, facing financial straits, moved to the city in 1832. The young Lippard did not live with his father, who had remarried following the death of Lippard’s mother. Excelling in his schoolwork, Lippard was steered toward the Methodist ministry—but after a semester of preparatory theological study at the Classical Academy in Rhinebeck, New York, Lippard returned in 1837, uneasy over the hypocrisy among those studying for the ministry. Shortly after, his father died, leaving him no inheritance, and for several years Lippard lived by his own resources in Philadelphia, briefly studying law but finding the same moral laxity he had found in the ministry.
In 1842, Lippard accepted work as a beat reporter and columnist for The Spirit of the Times, a small local paper. Finding that journalism afforded the opportunity to examine the moral and social ills of the city, Lippard quickly distinguished himself. Relentlessly critical of moral compromise, Lippard argued passionately that exposing corruption was the only way to triumph over such persistent failings. He turned to fiction in 1842, completing The Ladye Annabel in 1844, a Gothic melodrama about seduction and poisoning (Lippard was befriended early on by Edgar Allan Poe). Convinced that the American experiment had provided humanity its best chance to realize a morally sound civilization and equally convinced that his generation had forgotten that promise, Lippard turned to the era of the American Revolution in works that lionized the generation that had won American independence.
In 1844, Lippard quit journalism entirely to devote himself to both the lecture circuit, passionately advocating women’s rights, prisoner rights, and abolition, and to completing his most notorious work, The Quaker City: Or, The Monks of Monk Hall (1845). Based on a scandalous rape and murder trial, the book offered a lurid glimpse into a seamy underworld of Philadephia’s upper-class society, involving drug use, violence, sexual license, and secret rituals. Despite (or because of) the outcry against the book as pornographic, it became an immediate best seller.
A celebrity now, Lippard returned to lecturing and writing about the American Revolution. He became involved in the nascent labor movement, espousing an idealistic socialism that encouraged unions and preached tirelessly against the rich. He founded The Brotherhood of the Union in 1849, and devoted his few remaining years to promoting its ambitious agenda of reform that extended to women, African Americans, and Native Americans. The deaths of his two children and his young wife sent Lippard into a suicidal depression, although by the early 1850’s he had returned to the lecture circuit. His own health began to fail, and he struggled with tuberculosis until his death, February 9, 1854. Remarkably, he was only thirty-two. In a brief but incendiary career, Lippard established himself as a strident voice of uncompromising reform predicated on addressing the moral weaknesses inevitable in the human character.