George Lippard (April 10, 1822 – February 9, 1854) was a 19th-century American novelist, journalist, playwright, social activist, and labor organizer. He was a popular author in antebellum America.
60-431: Lippard is a surname. Notable people with the surname include: George Lippard (1822–1854), American novelist Lucy R. Lippard (born 1937), American art critic Jim Lippard (born 1965), American skeptic Stephen J. Lippard (born 1940), American professor of chemistry and National Medal of Science laureate [REDACTED] Surname list This page lists people with
120-424: A plea of insanity and was found not guilty. The trial took place only two months after Edgar Allan Poe 's short story " The Tell-Tale Heart ", a story based on other murder trials employing the insanity defense; Mercer's defense attorney openly acknowledged the "object of ridicule" which an insanity defense had become. Nonetheless, a verdict of not-guilty was rendered after less than an hour of jury deliberation, and
180-583: A "legend" called "Philippe de Agramont." Lippard wrote what he called "historical fictions and legends", which he defined as "history in its details and delicate tints, with the bloom and dew yet fresh upon it, yet told to us, in the language of passion, of poetry, of home!" These works, then, were not so much about what happened, as what Lippard believed ought to have happened. Some of his legendary romances include: The Ladye Annabel (1842); ' Bel of Prairie Eden (1848); Blanche of Brandywine (1846); The Nazarene (1846); Legends of Mexico (1847); and Legends of
240-532: A deadbeat, you didn't have much choice but to either pretend you were still getting the magazine and live a lie, or move out of the neighborhood before anyone found out." These last-ditch efforts failed to save the magazine, and Curtis announced in January 1969 that the February 8 issue would be the magazine's last. Ackerman stated that the magazine had lost $ 5M in 1968 and would lose a projected $ 3M in 1969. In
300-561: A declining number of people. Content by popular writers became harder to obtain. Prominent authors drifted away to newer magazines offering more money and status. As a result, the Post published more articles on current events and cut costs by replacing illustrations with photographs for covers and advertisements. In 1967, The magazine's publisher, Curtis Publishing Company , lost a landmark defamation suit, Curtis Publishing Co. v. Butts 388 U.S. 130 (1967), resulting from an article, and
360-560: A general readership. By 1991, Curtis Publishing Company had been renamed Curtis International, a subsidiary of SerVaas Inc., and had become an importer of audiovisual equipment. Today the Post is published six times a year by the Saturday Evening Post Society, which claims 501(c)(3) non-profit organization status. With the January/February 2013 issue, the Post launched a major makeover of
420-629: A means for men to sincerely follow a living religion. The organization grew and achieved a membership of 30,000 by 1917, but declined some time thereafter, ceasing to exist in 1994. He was a popular lecturer, journalist, and dramatist, renowned for both the stories he wrote and for his relentless advocacy of social justice. He was a participant in the National Reform Congress (1848) and the Eighth National Industrial Congress (1853), and in 1850 founded
480-475: A meeting with employees after the magazine's closure had been announced, Emerson thanked the staff for their professional work and promised "to stay here and see that everyone finds a job". At a March 1969 post-mortem on the magazine's closing, Emerson stated that The Post "was a damn good vehicle for advertising" with competitive renewal rates and readership reports and expressed what The New York Times called "understandable bitterness" in wishing "that all
540-1017: A serial appearing in successive issues. Most of the fiction was written for mainstream tastes by popular writers, but some literary writers were featured. The opening pages of stories featured paintings by the leading magazine illustrators. The Post published stories and essays by H. E. Bates , Ray Bradbury , Kay Boyle , Agatha Christie , Brian Cleeve , Eleanor Franklin Egan , William Faulkner , F. Scott Fitzgerald , C. S. Forester , Ernest Haycox , Robert A. Heinlein , Kurt Vonnegut , Paul Gallico , Normand Poirier , Hammond Innes , Louis L'Amour , Sinclair Lewis , Joseph C. Lincoln , John P. Marquand , Edgar Allan Poe , Mary Roberts Rinehart , Sax Rohmer , William Saroyan , John Steinbeck , Rex Stout , Rob Wagner , Edith Wharton , and P.G. Wodehouse . Poetry published came from poets including: Carl Sandburg , Ogden Nash , Dorothy Parker , and Hannah Kahn . Jack London 's best-known novel The Call of
600-623: A strange, huge building and hear chaotic, frightening noises. The building turns out to be a factory . George Lippard married Rose Newman on May 15, 1847. In an unconventional ceremony they were married outdoors in the evening of a new moon while standing on Mom Rinker's Rock above the Wissahickon Creek . That year, Lippard moved to 965 North Sixth Street, a home in which Poe had used as his final home in Philadelphia before moving to New York. His friendship with Edgar Allan Poe
660-474: A subscription to Life magazine; Life publisher Time Inc. paid Curtis $ 5M for the exchange, easing the company's mounting debts. The move was also widely seen as an opportunity for Curtis to abandon older and more rural readers, who were less valuable to the Post' s advertisers. Columnist Art Buchwald lampooned the decision, suggesting that "if the Saturday Evening Post considered you
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#1732775479212720-529: Is different from Wikidata All set index articles George Lippard A friend of Edgar Allan Poe , Lippard advocated a socialist political philosophy and sought justice for the working class in his writings. He founded a secret benevolent society, Brotherhood of the Union , investing in it all the trappings of a religion; the society, a precursor to labor organizations, survived until 1994. He authored two principal kinds of stories: Gothic tales about
780-506: Is notable. Poe gave Lippard credit for rescuing him from the streets on several occasions. He was more reserved about Lippard's artistic merits; possibly Poe's own artistic standards were too high to admit praise of Lippard's writing. This is ironic, because everything we generally associate with Poe was even more intense in Lippard's style. Lippard wrote an effusive obituary after Poe's death. Lippard's wife died on May 21, 1851, shortly after
840-533: Is populated with parsimonious bankers, foppish drunkards, adulterers, sadistic murderers, reverend rakes, and confidence men, all of whom the author depicts as potential threats to the Republic. Considered the first muckraking novel, it was the best-selling novel in America before Uncle Tom's Cabin . When it appeared in print in 1845, it sold 60,000 copies in its first year and at least 10,000 copies throughout
900-469: The Declaration of Independence in 1776. After Lippard became successful as a novelist, he tried to use popular literature as a vehicle for social reform. The Saturday Evening Post The Saturday Evening Post is an American magazine , currently published six times a year. It was published weekly from 1897 until 1963, and then every other week until 1969. From the 1920s to the 1960s, it
960-674: The Gazette ceased publication in 1800, ten years after Franklin's death, the Post links its history to the original magazine. Cyrus H. K. Curtis , publisher of the Ladies' Home Journal , bought the Post for $ 1,000 in 1897. Under the ownership of the Curtis Publishing Company , the Post grew to become the most widely circulated weekly magazine in the United States. The magazine gained prominent status under
1020-659: The New Deal . Garrett accused the Roosevelt administration of initiating socialist strategies. After Lorimer died, Garrett became editorial writer-in-chief and criticized the Roosevelt administration's support of the United Kingdom and efforts to prepare to enter World War II , and allegedly showed some support for Adolf Hitler in some of his editorials. Garrett's positions aroused controversy and may have cost
1080-961: The Post between 1943 and 1968, ceasing only when the magazine began displaying photographs on its covers. Another prominent artist was Charles R. Chickering , a freelance illustrator who went on to design numerous postage stamps for the U.S. Post Office. Other popular cover illustrators include artists George Hughes, Constantin Alajalov , John Clymer , Alonzo Kimball , W. H. D. Koerner , J. C. Leyendecker , Mead Schaeffer , Charles Archibald MacLellan , John E. Sheridan , Emmett Watson , Douglass Crockwell , and N. C. Wyeth . Cartoonists have included: Irwin Caplan , Clyde Lamb , Jerry Marcus , Frank O'Neal , Charles M. Schulz , and Bill Yates . The magazine ran Ted Key 's cartoon panel series Hazel from 1943 to 1969. Each issue featured several original short stories and often included an installment of
1140-536: The Post was transferred to the Benjamin Franklin Literary and Medical Society, founded in 1976 by the Post' s then-editor, Corena "Cory" SerVaas (wife of Beurt SerVaas). The magazine's core focus was now health and medicine; indeed, the magazine's website originally noted that the "credibility of The Saturday Evening Post has made it a valuable asset for reaching medical consumers and for helping medical researchers obtain family histories. In
1200-505: The Supreme Court , which held that libel damages may be recoverable (in this instance against a news organization) when the injured party is a non-public official, if the plaintiff can prove that the defendant was guilty of a reckless lack of professional standards when examining allegations for reasonable credibility. (Butts was eventually awarded $ 460,000.) William Emerson was promoted to editor-in-chief in 1965 and remained in
1260-623: The Wayback Machine were years later removed along with many other graves from this cemetery to Lawnview Memorial Park , an Odd Fellows Cemetery in Rockledge, Pennsylvania . His current monument was added by the Brotherhood of the Union. Lippard achieved substantial commercial success in his lifetime by purposely targeting a young working-class readership by using sensationalism, violence, and social criticism. Lippard acknowledged
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#17327754792121320-475: The Wissahickon Creek ; John Greenleaf Whittier relied on Lippard's legend about Kelpius for his long poem Pennsylvania Pilgrim . Another of Lippard's legends, "The Dark Eagle," about Benedict Arnold , was received uncritically by later readers, though few of its contemporary readers would have done the same. Many of the legends were republished in the Saturday Courier ; another edition Legends of
1380-410: The surname Lippard . If an internal link intending to refer to a specific person led you to this page, you may wish to change that link by adding the person's given name (s) to the link. Retrieved from " https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Lippard&oldid=735393461 " Category : Surnames Hidden categories: Articles with short description Short description
1440-530: The American family and rural life of a bygone era became icons. During his 50-year career with the Post , Rockwell painted more than 300 covers. The Post also employed Nebraska artist John Philip Falter , who became known as "a painter of Americana with an accent of the Middle West ," who "brought out some of the homeliness and humor of Middle Western town life and home life." He produced 120 covers for
1500-416: The Brotherhood of the Union. He was not, however, immune from some of the particular prejudices of his day. The Monks of Monk Hall (also published as Quaker City ) portrays a malevolent hump-backed Jewish character, Gabriel Van Gelt, one who forges, swindles, blackmails, and commits murder for money. Lippard's portrayal of blacks also reflects some of the stereotypes of his day; this is certainly hinted at in
1560-645: The Classical Academy). After considering a career in the Methodist religious ministry and rejecting it because of a "contradiction between theory and practice" of Christianity, he began the study of law, which he also abandoned, as it was incompatible with his beliefs about human justice. Following the death of his father in 1837, Lippard spent some time living like a homeless bohemian, working odd jobs and living in abandoned buildings and studios. Life on Philadelphia's streets gave him firsthand knowledge of
1620-663: The Cuban expedition; and "The Bulgine," the celebrated Negro Desperado of Moyamensing . Unlike many labor reformers of his time, Lippard was an enthusiastic supporter of the Mexican–American War . In an 1848 speech, he argued that Western expansion could provide working-class Americans with an opportunity to establish themselves as landholders, and thus to escape the oppressive conditions of urban factories. His novels Legends of Mexico: The Battles of Taylor (1847) and 'Bel of Prairie Eden (1848) used Gothic conventions to represent
1680-618: The March death of their infant son. Their daughter had died in 1850 at the age of 18 months. In 1852, Lippard spoke in Philadelphia on the 115th birthday of Thomas Paine , attempting to redeem his political legacy and reputation, which had faltered somewhat due to his book The Age of Reason . In his version of Paine's life, Paine was responsible for convincing John Adams , Benjamin Rush , and Benjamin Franklin to seek American independence. He
1740-652: The Revolution (1847). One of the particular Legends of the Revolution was called "The Fourth of July, 1776," though it has come down to us under the name "Ring, Grandfather, Ring" . The story was first published on January 2, 1847, in the Philadelphia Saturday Courier before being collected in Washington and His Generals . The story introduced "a tall slender man... dressed in a dark robe", left unidentified, whose stirring speech inspired
1800-439: The Revolution was published 22 years after his death in 1876. George Lippard's most notorious book, The Quaker City, or The Monks of Monk Hall (1845), is a lurid and thickly plotted exposé of city life in antebellum Philadelphia. Highly anti-capitalistic in its message, Lippard aimed to expose the hypocrisy of the Philadelphia elite, as well as the darker underside of American capitalism and urbanization. Lippard's Philadelphia
1860-481: The Wild was first published, in serialized form, in the Saturday Evening Post in 1903. Emblematic of the Post's fiction was author Clarence Budington Kelland , who first appeared in 1916–17 with stories of homespun heroes, "Efficiency Edgar" and "Scattergood Baines". Kelland was a steady presence from 1922 until 1961. For many years William Hazlett Upson contributed a very popular series of short stories about
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1920-649: The age of 31 in Philadelphia , Pennsylvania, on February 9, 1854. George Lippard was born on April 10, 1822, in West Nantmeal Township, Pennsylvania , on the farm of his father, Daniel B. Lippard. The family moved to Philadelphia two years later, shortly after his father was injured in a farming accident. Young Lippard grew up in Philadelphia, in Germantown (presently part of the city of Philadelphia), and Rhinebeck, New York (where he attended
1980-424: The course of the 1960s, but he insisted that the magazine maintained a standard of good quality and was appreciated by readers. In 1970, control of the debilitated Curtis Publishing Company was acquired from the estate of Cyrus Curtis by Indianapolis industrialist Beurt SerVaas . SerVaas relaunched the Post the following year on a quarterly basis as a kind of nostalgia magazine. In early 1982, ownership of
2040-524: The cover and embedded in stories and advertising. Some Post illustrations continue to be reproduced as posters or prints, especially those by Norman Rockwell . In 1929, at the beginning of the Mexican Repatriation , The Saturday Evening Post ran a series on the racial inferiority of Mexicans. In 1954, it published its first articles on the role of the U.S. in deposing Mohammad Mosaddegh , Prime Minister of Iran , in 1953. The article
2100-540: The disease, Lippard spent the final months of his life writing a newspaper story protesting against the Fugitive Slave Law. He died on February 9, 1854, at his home, then 1509 Lawrence Street, shortly before attaining the age of 32. His last words were to his physician: "Is this death?" He was buried at Odd Fellows Cemetery at 24th and Diamond Streets in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, but his remains and an impressive burial monument Archived 2007-10-08 at
2160-595: The early leaders of the United States, including George Washington and Benedict Arnold . Lippard particularly admired Washington and devoted more pages to him than any other writer of fiction up to that time, though his stories are often sensationalized and immersed in Gothic elements. In one of his later stories Lippard relates that George Washington rises from his tomb at Mount Vernon to take pilgrimage of nineteenth-century America accompanied by an immortal Roman named Adonai. The pair travel to Valley Forge where they see
2220-529: The effects the Panic of 1837 had on the urban poor. Distressed by the misery he witnessed, "Lippard decided to become a writer for the masses." Lippard then commenced employment with the Philadelphia daily newspaper Spirit of the Times . His lively sketches and police court reporting drew readers and increased the paper's circulation. He was but twenty when The Saturday Evening Post published his first story,
2280-416: The escapades of Earthworm Tractors salesman Alexander Botts. Publication in the Post launched careers and helped established artists and writers stay afloat. P. G. Wodehouse said "the wolf was always at the door" until the Post gave him his "first break" in 1915 by serializing Something New . After the election of Franklin D. Roosevelt , Post columnist Garet Garrett became a vocal critic of
2340-576: The faint-hearted members of the Second Continental Congress to sign the Declaration of Independence . After the document was signed, Lippard claimed, independence was announced to the people by the ringing of the Liberty Bell on the 4th of July, causing its fabled crack, though this event did not happen. Another of Lippard's legends misrepresents somewhat the beliefs of Johannes Kelpius and his community of followers along
2400-453: The family and the lawyer of young Mercer were greeted by a cheering crowd while disembarking from the same Philadelphia-Camden ferry line on which the killing took place. Lippard employed the seduction aspect of the trial as a metaphor for the oppression of the helpless. The Monks of Monk Hall outraged some readers with its lingering descriptions of "heaving bosoms" but such descriptions also drew readers and he sold many books. A stage version
2460-415: The great mass of readers". Its first issue was published December 30, 1848. In 1850, Lippard founded the Brotherhood of the Union, later renamed the Brotherhood of America, a secret benevolent society aiming to eliminate poverty and crime by removing the social ills causing them. His own title in the organization was "Supreme Washington". His legend-like vision was that such an organization would establish
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2520-433: The immorality, horror, vice, and debauchery of large cities, such as The Monks of Monk Hall (1844), reprinted as The Quaker City (1844); and historical fiction of a type called romances, such as Blanche of Brandywine (1846), Legends of Mexico (1847), and the popular Legends of the Revolution (1847). Both kinds of stories, sensational and immensely popular when written, are mostly forgotten today. Lippard died at
2580-425: The influence of Charles Brockden Brown (1771–1810) on his writing and dedicated several books to him. Lippard's writing has occasional glimmers of style, but his words are more memorable for quantity than for quality, and his writing for its financial success than for its literary style. He proved that one could make a living by wordsmithing. If he is remembered at all today, it is more for his social thinking, which
2640-485: The late 2000s, The Saturday Evening Post is published six times a year by the Saturday Evening Post Society, which purchased the magazine in 1982. The magazine was redesigned in 2013. The Saturday Evening Post was first published in 1821 in the same printing shop at 53 Market Street in Philadelphia , where the Benjamin Franklin -founded Pennsylvania Gazette was published in the 18th century. While
2700-482: The leadership of its longtime editor George Horace Lorimer (1899–1937). The Saturday Evening Post published current event articles, editorials, human interest pieces, humor, illustrations, a letter column, poetry with contributions submitted by readers, single-panel gag cartoons , including Hazel by Ted Key , and stories by leading writers of the time. It was known for commissioning lavish illustrations and original works of fiction. Illustrations were featured on
2760-526: The lengthy full title of one of his sensational crime novels: The killers: A narrative of real life in Philadelphia: in which the deeds of the killers, and the great riot of election night, October 10, 1849, are minutely described : Also, the adventures of three notorious individuals, who took part in that riot, to wit: Cromwell D. Z. Hicks, the leader of the Killers; Don Jorge, one of the leaders of
2820-422: The magazine, national health surveys are taken to further current research on topics such as cancer , diabetes , high blood pressure , heart disease , ulcerative colitis , spina bifida , and bipolar disorder ." Ownership of the magazine was later transferred to the Saturday Evening Post Society; SerVaas headed both organizations. The range of topics covered in the magazine's articles is now wide, suitable for
2880-503: The most famous person to quote a historical romance by George Lippard as though it were actual history is the late President Ronald Reagan , in a commencement address at Eureka College on June 7, 1957. Reagan quoted from George Lippard's "Speech of the Unknown" in Washington and His Generals: or, Legends of the Revolution (1847), which relates how a speech by an anonymous delegate was the final motivation that spurred delegates to sign
2940-552: The next decade. Its success made Lippard one of the highest-paid American writers of the 1840s, earning $ 3,000 to $ 4,000 a year. The Quaker City is partly based on the March 1843 New Jersey trial of Singleton Mercer. Mercer was accused of the murder of Mahlon Hutchinson Heberton aboard the Philadelphia-Camden ferry vessel John Finch on February 10, 1843. Heberton had seduced (or raped - sources differ upon this point), Mercer's sixteen-year-old sister. Mercer entered
3000-427: The one-eyed critics will lose their other eye". Otto Friedrich , the magazine's last managing editor, blamed the death of The Post on Curtis. In his Decline and Fall (Harper & Row, 1970), an account of the magazine's final years (1962–69), he argued that corporate management was unimaginative and incompetent. Friedrich acknowledges that The Post faced challenges while the tastes of American readers changed over
3060-458: The position until the magazine's demise in 1969. In 1968, Martin Ackerman , a specialist in troubled firms, became president of Curtis after lending it $ 5M. With the magazine still in dire financial straits, Ackerman announced that Curtis would reduce printing costs by cancelling the subscriptions of roughly half of its readers. Those who lost their subscriptions were offered a free transfer to
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#17327754792123120-626: The publication, including a new cover design and efforts to increase the magazine's profile, in response to a general public misbelief that it was no longer in existence. The magazine's new logo is an update of a logo it had used beginning in 1942. As of October 2018, the complete archive of the magazine is available online. In 1916, Saturday Evening Post editor George Horace Lorimer discovered Norman Rockwell , then an unknown 22-year-old New York City artist. Lorimer promptly purchased two illustrations from Rockwell, using them as covers, and commissioned three more drawings. Rockwell's illustrations of
3180-577: The short time Twain spent in Philadelphia working for The Philadelphia Inquirer , he wrote: "Unlike New York, I like this Philadelphia amazingly, and the people in it . . . . I saw small steamboats, with their signs up--'For Wissahickon and Manayunk 25 cents.' Geo. Lippard, in his Legends of Washington and his Generals, has rendered the Wissahickon sacred in my eyes, and I shall make that trip, as well as one to Germantown, soon . . . ." Many of Lippard's fictions were received as historical fact. Probably
3240-542: The war as a heroic fulfillment of the American Revolution 's egalitarian promise. Later in his career, Lippard seemed to grow more ambivalent about the war, and in 1851 he published a sketch called "A Sequel to the Legends of Mexico" in which he expressed a concern that the way he depicted the conflict in his novels might "lead young hearts into an appetite for blood-shedding". Many of his stories dealt with
3300-403: Was also caught in a controversy with Philadelphia publisher, who incorrectly claimed that Lippard had agreed to publish exclusively with him. Other distributors suffered as a result and Lippard referred to Peterson as a "mercenary creature" who had "made his thousands of dollars off of me". Always frail, Lippard suffered from tuberculosis for the last years of his life. Confined to his house with
3360-424: Was based on materials leaked by CIA director Allen Dulles . The Post readership began to decline in the late 1950s and 1960s. In general, the decline of general interest magazines was blamed on television, which competed for advertisers and readers' attention. The Post had problems retaining readers: the public's taste in fiction was changing, and the Post ' s conservative politics and values appealed to
3420-408: Was one of the most widely circulated and influential magazines among the American middle class, with fiction, non-fiction, cartoons and features that reached two million homes every week. In the 1960s, the magazine's readership began to decline. In 1969, The Saturday Evening Post folded for two years before being revived as a quarterly publication with an emphasis on medical articles in 1971. As of
3480-475: Was ordered to pay $ 3,060,000 in damages to the plaintiff . The Post article implied that football coaches Paul "Bear" Bryant and Wally Butts conspired to fix a game between the University of Alabama and the University of Georgia . Both coaches sued Curtis Publishing Co. for defamation, each initially asking for $ 10 million. Bryant eventually settled for $ 300,000 while Butts' case went to
3540-483: Was prepared but banned in Philadelphia for fear of riots. Though many were offended by the story's lurid elements, the book also prompted social and legal reform and may have led to New York's 1849 enactment of an anti-seduction law. Lippard took advantage of the popularity of his novel The Quaker City to establish his own weekly periodical, also named The Quaker City . He advertised it as "A Popular Journal, devoted to such matters of Literature and news as will interest
3600-423: Was progressive, than for his language and literary style. One contemporary reviewer noted Lippard's efforts as a social critic: "It was his business to attack social wrongs, to drag away purple garments, and expose to our shivering gaze the rottenness of vice—to take tyranny by the throat and strangle it to death." Nonetheless, the year before Lippard's death, Mark Twain mentioned him in a letter to home. During
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