Combining an innate radicalism with a keen sense of his audience's literary tastes, George Lippard became one of the most controversial and popular writers of the mid nineteenth century. His works, dealing with a wide variety of subjects including Gothic horror, the American Revolution, moral hypocrisy, social inequality, literary cliques, and the labor movement, struck a chord with his contemporaries and allowed him to make a successful living as a professional man of letters. The Quaker City; or, The Monks of Monk-Hall: A Romance of Philadelphia Life, Mystery, and Crime (1844-1845), Lippard's most famous book, sold nearly one hundred thousand copies by 1854, the year of his death. Lippard proudly proclaimed that this exposé of the corruption of "finer" Philadelphia society "has been more attacked, and more read, than any work of American fiction ever published."

One of the most strikingly original literary figures of his time, Lippard...