George Lippard, The Quaker City, Or, the Monks of Monk Hall: A Romance of Philadelphia Life, Mystery, and Crime

edited with an introduction by David S. Reynolds

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Praise

First published in 1845, this sensational exposé of social corruption, personal debauchery, and the sexual exploitation of women in antebellum Philadelphia was America’s best-selling novel before the appearance of Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852).

“One could scarcely overestimate the need to bring George Lippard’s The Quaker City back into print.”
— Penn. Mag. of History and Biography

America’s best-selling novel in its time, The Quaker City, or the Monks of Monk Hall, published in 1845, is a sensational expose of social corruption, personal debauchery, and the sexual exploitation of women in antebellum Philadelphia. This edition, with an introduction by David S. Reynolds, brings back into print this important work by George Lippard ), a journalist, freethinker, and labor and social reformer.

About the Book

America’s best-selling novel in its time, The Quaker City, published in 1845, is a sensational exposé of social corruption, personal debauchery, and the sexual exploitation of women in antebellum Philadelphia. This new edition, with an introduction by David S. Reynolds, brings back into print this important work by George Lippard (1822-1854), a journalist, free-thinker, and labor and social reformer.

Critical Praise for The Quaker City

“One could scarcely overestimate the need to bring George Lippard’s The Quaker City; or, The Monks of Monk Hall back into print…Scholars, teachers, and students increasingly have found Lippard to be a rich subject of historical study, creating a demand for an accessible edition of his most popular novel. Issued 150 years after the original publication of the Quaker City, this book fills that scholarly need, assuring that Lippard will play a significant role in academic debate long into the future.”  –Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography

“Lippard is essential to any revisionist study or examination of nineteenth-­century American literature, to nineteenth-century social history, to popular culture, to historical cultural studies, and to working-class history and litera­ture.”

—Sheila Post-Lauria, University of Massachusetts, Boston

“In The Quaker City, Lippard is negotiating a great many early nineteenth­-century concerns over transitions in the status of masculinity and femininity in working- and middle-class cultures …. The book will have a terrific appeal in American literature courses, given the current focus on both canon expansion and the ‘new historicism.’ lt should also find a home in courses in American studies, U.S. history and women’s and gender studies.”

—Dana D. Nelson, Louisiana State University

“The Monks of Monk Hall deserves always to be in print. A thoroughly chal­lenging book, it contains much that is surprising and greatly illuminates urban America in its period. . . . lt would make a superb supplemental reading for the first half of the U.S. history survey, raising vital issues regarding race, gender, and religion in antebellum America. .. . No scholar is more knowledgeable on George Lippard than David Reynolds.”

–David Roediger, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities