George Lippard (1822-1854)

"The scavenger's trade may be useful, but we don't like his company."

-- Lon. Athen., 1845, 1014. -- From Samuel Austin Allibone’s entry on George Lippard in A Critical Dictionary of English Literature and British and American Authors , (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott, 1900) Page 1105

The Empire City; or, New York By Night and Day, It’s Aristocracy and Its Dollars.

By George Lippard.

“This work is, beyond a doubt, the most absorbing novel of the age.”

Philadelphia: T. B. Peterson & Brothers. 306 Chestnut Street.

The Empire City was first published in 1850 By Stringer & Townsend of New York. George Lippard was hugely impressed by Eugene Sue, although he would heatedly deny The Quaker City was influenced by Sue. Lippard said he was in the midst of writing The Quaker City when The Mysteries of Paris was published. Most of his works were reprinted in the 1960’s and ‘90’s and are easily available.

“We shall dare to lift the Golden shroud, and look upon the poverty and wretchedness which it but half conceals; we will wander forth, among the palaces and huts of the great city, and look its splendid misery and naked crime fearlessly in the face; we will stand silent and wondering, as the panorama of its varied and changeful life widens and grows before us, revealing the secrets of a barbarous civilization, with the promise of a better day dawning upon the darkest crimes, and lighting up its lowest deep.

Come with me, then, and let us look upon -

THE EMPIRE CITY,

into whose streets and homes, and temples, flows the virtue and the crime, the luxury and the misery, of the Old World and the New. Let us look upon

‘NEW YORK BY NIGHT AND DAY’

Lippard’s works have a weird serial style and a sensational surrealism, but they are obviously serial work, and share the disjointed quality of the penny-a-liner plots that went on until the readers tired of them. He never knew what would happen to his characters in the next episode. His work is full of bosoms behaving so acrobatically you would think Lippard’s heroines had steam-driven breasts.

I think part of his appeal to modern readers was his socialist philosophy, which he shared with Eugene Sue and Sue’s disciple, G. W. M. Reynolds. Lippard formed a secret society advancing the rights of working men in 1849 calling it The Brotherhood of the Union. He was very popular as a lecturer, and his writing showed his training as a preacher:

“Enormous WEALTH is only enormous CRIME.

Yes, we may phrase it as we will, the immense concentration of wealth in the hands of any one man, or in the hands of any corporate power, is an evil, fraught with more danger to the happiness and liberty of the nation, than all the crowned tyrants in the world.

It does very well, friend Martin, for us to shout, down with Kings! But what if this banker is a king, this merchant a tyrant, that church a despot?

Our Fathers in the Revolution battled against constitutional tyranny. To their children they left a solemn heritage; yes, to the people of the future they bequeathed an eternal war against the tyrants of the social system.

I shudder as I contemplate the course of the next twenty-one years!

Unless my countrymen awake to their danger, after the lapse of twenty-one years this country will be cursed with an untitled nobility, a hundred fold more infamous than the titled nobility of Europe; with immense landed proprietors, and innumerable multitudes of landless and lawless poor; with the growth of mammoth cities, sweltering with the congregated enormities of our present civilization, and presenting at one view, the terrible contrast of wealth that cannot be counted, and poverty and crime that have no limit in their awful degradation. Think of it Martin! In twenty-one years, you may see our social system symbolized in a picture like this; - on one side, a church of God, WORTH (that is the word) worth TWO HUNDRED MILLIONS OF DOLLARS, and, on the other side, a human being, created by the same God whom the worshippers in the church profess to love, dying of the slow agonies of starvation, and dying within the sound of that church’s Sabbath bells!

You may think me wild, you may call me visionary! Alas! That every holy impulse of our hearts alone should be vision, while the demoniac, the bestial, alone are horribly real! But I swear to you, in this my dying hour, that I hope the day will come, when every man in our land will dwell on his own ground, and when the immensely rich man will be considered only as the immensely infamous criminal.”

Lippard’s poverty-stricken characters were no better, when hungry, the first thing a father thinks of selling is his baby. Everyone is corrupt in the Empire City.

The sexuality in Lippard’s serials didn’t hurt sales of his work, which reached 60,000 copies for The Quaker City. In this quote, a man sneaks up on his wife in the garden;

“My wife was there, her form clad in the white folds of her morning robe. Those folds gave a new charm to the spiritual voluptuousness of her shape, revealing every graceful outline, the elastic beauty of her limbs, the round fullness of her bosom.

But that bosom was bared - it rose, it fell, it panted and heaved with passion. Her golden hair was unbound: it fell trembling, and in copious waves, over the spotless neck and snowy shoulders. Her eyes were half closed; the lids drooped as if in dreamy languor. Her lips were parted; I could see the ivory whiteness of her teeth gleaming out from between those glowing portals.”

“And by her side, his arm around her waist, his hand clasped in hers, his cheek resting on her shoulder was a man, whose dark eyes flashed the same passion, which seemed to hide its glare beneath her half-closed lids.”

It turns out to be the narrator’s brother, and the narrator commits suicide.

Characters have names that suit them, like Ishmael Ghoul owner of the “Daily Blaze”;

“Soon, diverging from Broadway, I stood at a dingy counter, in a miserable room, scarcely ten feet square -- this was the office of the “Daily Blaze,” for at this period Ghoul had not made but was only making his money; he had not yet planted himself in a huge edifice, with a steam engine thundering in the cellar. The walls of the office were papered with handbills, from whose big capitals you might trace the last week’s history of the Blaze; Murders, Seductions, Elopements in High Life, and Divorce cases, crowded at each other’s heels, in one confused medley of horrors.”

“Hours might be expended in showing how this miserable man had been hardened into the thing he was. How years of ill-treatment and neglect had ossified every good fibre of his heart. How poor and utterly wretched, he had turned upon the world, which had trampled him, and (like Marat in the French Revolution,) hurled every day from his den, the printed Infamy which daily damned the happiness of a thousand homes.”

And there was violence:

“I was standing in the centre of my little room, the hatchet in my hand; before me was stretched the huge form of Buggles, as motionless as a block of stone. There was a hideous mark near his right temple; a mark formed by a gash from which the blood oozed slowly. His eyes were set; his jaw hung upon his breast; his fingers were cramped.

I bent down and touched him - shook him - he did not move - I arose and looked in the glass over the mantel; my face was very pale, there was no blood upon it; I felt that I saw the face of the murderer.

The hatchet was still clutched in my right hand; there was blood upon its edge.”

The Empire City was well-written compared to the over-the-top style of an earlier romance; Blanche Of Brandywine; or, September The Eighth To Eleventh, 1777, A Romance Of The American Revolution, first published in 1846 and 1847 by G. B. Zeiber. In the Prologue we meet the earl of Monthermer, who tells his servant:

“Bernard, it is the seventeenth of July!”

The servant shuddered from head to foot. With trembling steps he turns to the farthest corner of the chamber and lifts the purple tapestry. Three doors, known only to the Earl and his servitor, are revealed, with a few strange words, written on their dark panels.

On the first door is written: “The Seventeenth of July.”

On the second: “The Eleventh of September.”

On the third: “The Fourteenth of November.”

The servant shudders, for on the return of each of these days, his master, the proud Earl, enters one of these rooms, and passes long hours in unspeakable agony.’

“It is the Seventeenth of July!”

The proud Earl laid off the jeweled robe, which enveloped his slender form. Nay, even the vest, which encircled his sunken chest. With his aged form, bare to the waist, he knelt on the hard floor, beside the cross of iron. He knelt groaning with agony.

“The lash, Bernard, the lash!”

The old servant, with tears in his eyes, drew forth, from beneath the curtains of the altar, a thick cord, knotted at the ends.

“Strike, Bernard, and do not -- spare,” said the old Earl, in a choking voice.

Then Bernard, with tears raining down his aged face, wound one end of the cord around his wrist, and lashed his master on the shoulders and breast, until the blood ran down. His withered flesh was all one mass of gore. As the servant struck him, with the dripping cord, he called on God for mercy, murmuring a terrible confession of broken vows, innocence betrayed, and holy rites profaned.

Still, as the blood ran down, in separate streams, he shrieked, “”Strike, Bernard, strike! The memory of this day is terrible, but, oh God - the Eleventh of September! The Eleventh of September, it will soon be here! I can endure the lash; that I have endured without a murmur, for twenty years!”

He is interrupted:

“Woe for us, woe! The Lady Isidore -- ah, woe, woe! So young too, and yet to die! Could none of ye save her? As she wandered by the lake, why did ye not warn her from the brink! Ye saw her, hurry from the hall, ye saw her white form, gleaming among the trees, ye heard the plunge, and now - woe! woe! woe! There is her scarf and the lily that she wore in her dark hair!”

And with a shriek the aged woman burst into the room, and flung herself at the feet of the Earl, placing in his hands, all that remained of the lady Isidore.

The white scarf, which had been warmed by her bosom, the lily which had gleamed from her dark hair.

“This” shrieked the Earl, “This, is but the Seventeenth of July, but the Eleventh of September, the Fourteenth of November - they are yet to come.”

Blanche has a constantly moving bosom;

“-- with throbbing bosom and gasping utterance --”

“-- eyes flashed and her bosom heaved --”

And this particularly difficult maneuver;

“- -and her bosom arose throbbing to her very face --”

T. B. Peterson & Brothers were publishers of reprints of George Lippard’s (1822-1854) Blanche of Brandywine, The Empire City, New York: its upper ten and lower million, and The Quaker City. Peterson published Cheap editions of Charles Dickens, Ainsworth, Dumas, and Southworth and a number of bloods featuring murderers, highwaymen, and pirates. One of the brothers, Charles Peterson, published Peterson’s Magazine in 1842, which merged with Munsey’s Argosy Magazine in 1896.

The Empire City is available HERE.

T. B. Peterson & Brothers’ List of Publications.

T. B. Peterson & Brothers, Philadelphia, Pa.

Highwaymen, Murderers, etc.

Price 25 Cents each.

Lives of the Felons. Illustrated.

Life and Adventures of Jonathan Wild.

Life of Jack Ketch, the Murderer.

Life and Adventures of Mary Bateman.

Life of Mother Brownrigg.

Life of Raoul De Seville.

Life and Adventures of Rody the Rover.

The Life of Arthur Spring.

Captain Blood and the Hangman’s Daughter.

Captain Blood and the Beagles.

Life of Dick Parker, the Mutineer.

Life and Adventures of Henry Thomas.

Life of Ninon De L’Enclos.

Life of Mrs. Whipple and Jesse Strang.

Life of Galloping Dick, the Highwayman.

Sixteen-Stringed Jack’s Fight for Life.

The Highwayman’s Avenger; or, The Escape of Sixteen-Stringed Jack.

Biddy Woodhull, the Beautiful Haymaker.

Price Fifty Cents Each.

Life of Helen Jewett, And Richard P. Robinson.

The Diary of A Pawnbroker; Or, The Three Golden Balls. Illustrated.

Life and Adventures of John A. Murrel.

Life and Adventures of Joseph T. Hare.

The Robber’s Wife. A Domestic Romance.

Obi; or, Three-Fingered Jack.

Tom Waters; or, the Haunted Highwayman.

Ned Hastings; or, The Terror of The Road.

Eveleen Wilson; or, Trials of an Orphan Girl.

Silver and Pewter; or, Life In New York.

Sweeny Todd, the Ruffian Barber.

The Desperadoes of the New World.

Jack Rann’s Life and Adventures.

Kit Clayton. Sequel to Jack Rann.

Life of Colonel Monroe Edwards.

Mysteries of New Orleans.

Dick Turpin’s Life and Adventures.

Nat Blake, the Domedo Highwayman.

Galloping Gus. the Purse and The Pistol.

Bill Horton. The Doomed Highwayman.

Jack Sheppard’s Life and Adventures.

Davy Crockett’s Life and Adventures.

Life and Adventures of Grace O’Malley.

Life and Trial of Antoine Prost.

Life and Adventures Of Sybil Grey.

Life of Guy Fawkes. 75 cents.

Adventures of Valentine Vox. 75 cents.

Adventures of Sylvester Sound. 75 cents.

The Banditti of the Prairie. 75 cents.

Memoirs of Vidocq. Principal Agent of The French Police. Paper, $1.50; or cloth, $1.75.

Revolutionary Tales.

The Flying Artillerist. Price fifty cents.

Old Put; or, the Days of ‘76. Price fifty cents.

The Seven Brothers of Wyoming; or, the Brigands Of The American Revolution. Price fifty cents.

The Rebel Bride. Price fifty cents.

Grace Dudley; or Arnold at Saratoga. Price fifty cents.

Ralph Runnion; or, Outlaw’s Doom. Price fifty cents.

The Brigand; or, the Mountain Chief. Price fifty cents.

Wan-nan-gee; Or, The Massacre At Chicago. Price fifty cents.

Lippard’s Legends of Mexico. Price fifty cents.

The Guerrilla Chief. Price fifty cents.

The Quaker Soldier. One volume, paper, $1.50; or cloth, $1.75.

Sea and Piratical Tales.

Life and Adventures of Jack Adams, The Celebrated Sailor and Mutineer. Price 75 cents.

Life and Adventures Of Ben Brace, the Sailor. Price 75 cents.

Jack Ariel; or, Life On Board an East Indiaman. Price 75 cents.

Life And Adventures of Tom Bowling, the Sailor. Price 75 cents.

The Petrel; or, Love on the Ocean. A Sea Novel By Admiral Fisher. One volume. Price 75 cents.

Cruising in Last War. Price 75 cents.

Percy Effingham. Price 75 cents.

Life of Paul Periwinkle. Price 75 cents.

Sea Tales, At Fifty Cents Each.

Red King; or, the Corsair Chieftain.

Yankee Jack; Or, the Perils of A Privateersman.

The Pacha of Many Tales.

Pirate and Three Cutters.

Life of Alexander Tardy, the Pirate.

The Flying Yankee. By Harry Hazel.

The Yankee Middy; or, the Two Frigates.

The Gold Seekers; or, Cruise of the Lively Sally.

Yankees in Japan; or, the Adventures of a Sailor.

The Doomed Ship; or, Wreck of Arctic Regions.

Davis the Pirate; or, Freebooter of the Pacific.

Harry Tempest; or, The Pirate’s Protege.

The Man-of-War’s Man.

Morgan the Buccaneer; or, the Freebooters.

Jack Junk; or, the Tar For All Weathers.

Valdez the Pirate; His Life and Adventures.

Gallant Tom; or, Perils of the Ocean.

Harry Helm; or, the Cruise of the Bloodhound.

The King’s Cruisers. Harry Hazel.

Rebel and the Rover.

The Flying Dutchman.

Red Wing; or, The Cruisers of Van Dieman’s Land.

Percival Keene.

Peter Simple.

Newton Forster.

Phantom Ship.

The Three Pirates.

Jacob Faithful.

Midshipman Easy.

The Sea King.

Poor Jack.

Naval Officer.

Snarleyow.

The Corsair.

King’s Own.

Japhet.

Sea Tales, At 25 cents each.

The Pirate’s Son. Illustrated.

The River Pirates. A Tale of New York.

Dark Shades of City Life.

Rats of the Seine; or, The River Thieves Of Paris.

Charles Ransford; or, Love On Board A Cruiser.

The Iron Cross. By Sylvanus Cobb, Jr.

Good Books At Fifty Cents Each.

The Woman In Red. A Companion To The “Woman In White.”

Twelve Months of Matrimony. By Emile M. Carlen.

Leah; Or, the Forsaken.

The Fortune Hunter. By Mrs. Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie.

Clifford and The Actress; Or, The Reigning Favorite. By Margaret Blount.

The Greatest Plague of Life; Or, The Adventures Of A Lady In Search Of A Good Servant. By One Who Has Been “Worried To Death.”

The Admiral’s Daughter. By Mrs. Marsh.

Jenny Ambrose; or, Life in The Eastern States.

Moreton Hall; or, the Spirits Of The Haunted House.

Ella Stratford; or, The Orphan child. By The Countess Of Blessington.

Abednego, the Money-Lender. By Mrs. Gore. One large octavo volume.

Robert Oaklands; or, the Outcast Orphan. By Author Of “Robber Of The Rhine.”

The Two Lovers; or, A Sister’s Devotion. A Domestic Story. By Author Of “Twin Sisters.”

The Orphan sisters. By Mrs. Marsh, Author Of “The Deformed.”

Moredun. a Tale of 1210. By Sir Walter Scott, Bart., author of “Ivanhoe.”

Ryan’s Mysteries Of Marriage. Full Of Illustrations.

The Orphans and Caleb Field. By Mrs. Olliphant.

The Monk. By Mathew G. Lewis.

Female Life in New York.

The Beautiful French Girl.

Bell Brandon, the Withered Fig Tree.

The Emigrant squire.

Agnes Grey. By Author of “Jane Eyre.”

The Diary Of A Physician.

Sybil Grey. A Romance of the Opera.

Violet.

Alieford. A Family History.

Josephine. By Grace Aguilar.

The Life Trials and Execution Of Antoine Probst, The Murderer of the Dearing Family, with his Two Confessions.

Victims of Amusements. By Martha Clark. Suitable for Sunday-schools.

Father Clement. By Author of “Dunallen.”

Romish Confessionals. By M. Michelet, the French Historian.

Father Tom and The Pope; or, A Night At The Vatican. By The Late John Fisher Murray. With A Preface By R. Shelton Mackenzie, Esq., and Illustrated Engravings.

J. F. Smith’s Works.

The Usurer’s Victim; or, Thomas Balscombe. One volume, octavo.

Adelaide Waldegrave; or, the Trials of a Governess. One volume, octavo.

Good Books At 75 Cents Each.

The Brigand; or, the Demon of the North. By Victor Hugo, Author Of “Les Miserables.”

Red Indians of Newfoundland. A beautifully Illustrated Indian Story.

Corrine; or, Italy. By Madame De Stael. The Poetical Passages By L.E.L.

Mysteries of Three Cities; Boston, New York, and Philadelphia. By A. J. H. Duganne.

Flirtations in America; or, High Life in New York.

Thackeray’s Irish Sketch Book. By W. M. Thackeray, Author of “Vanity Fair.”

Tom Raquet and His Three Maiden Aunts.

The Coquette. By The Author Of “Misserimus.” One of The Best Books Ever Written.

Whitehall; or, the Times Of Oliver Cromwell. Illustrated. By Author Of “Whitefriars.”

Ned Musgrave; or, the Most Unfortunate Man In The World. By Theodore Hook.

The Beautiful Nun. By Ned Buntline.

Llorente’s History of the Inquisition in Spain.

Aristocracy; or, Life Among The Upper Ten. By Joseph A. Nunes, Esq.

Roanoke; or, Where Is Utopia ? By. C. H. Wiley.

Life & Adventures of Paul Periwinkle.

Banditti of The Prairie.

Salathiel. By Rev. George Croley.

The Crock Of Gold. By Tupper.

The Twins And Heart. By Tupper.

Leyton Hall. By Mark Lemon.

Elsie’s Married Life.

New Hope; or, the Rescue.

Genevra by Miss Fairfield.

Works by the Best Authors.

Price twenty five cents each.

Madison’s Exposition of Odd Fellowship. Illustrated.

The Two Prima Donnas by George Augustus Sala.

The Woman In Grey by Mrs. Gaskell.

Aunt Margaret’s Trouble.

The Mysteries of Bedlam.

The Mysteries of a Convent.

The Mysterious Marriage.

Jack Downing’s Letters.

Rose Warrington by A. J. H. Duganne.

Rifle Shots at The Great Men Of The Day.

Tom Tiddler’s Ground by Charles Dickens.

Gliddon’s Ancient Egypt.

The Deformed by Mrs. Marsh.

The Iron Cross by Sylvanus Cobb, Jr.

The Nobleman’s Daughter.

Ghost Stories, a Wonderful Book. Illustrated.

Philip In Search Of a Wife.

Rody the Rover. A Tale of Ireland.

The Courtier. Sir E. L. Bulwer.

Somebody’s Luggage by Dickens.

Ladies Science of Etiquette.

Charles Ransford; Or, Life on a Cruiser.

Abbey of Innismoyle by Grace Kennedy, author of “Father Clement.

Petersons’ “Illuminated” Stories.

Price 25 cents each.

Each book being in an “Illuminated Cover,” in five colors, full of illustrations, and are the most saleable series of books ever printed.

Rebel and the Rover.

Dick Parker.

Jack Ketch.

Mother Brownrigg.

Galloping Dick.

Mary Bateman.

Raoul De Surville.

Harry Thomas.

Mrs. Whipple and Jesse Strang.

Ninon De L’Enclos.

The River Pirates.

Dark Shades of City Life.

Rats of the Seine.

Mysteries Of Bedlam.

Charles Ransford.

The Iron Cross.

Biddy Woodhull.

Mysteries of a Convent.

The Highwayman’s Adventure.

Rody the Rover.

16 - Stringed- Jack’s Fight for Life.

Jonathan Wild.

The Two Merchants.

A Year after Marriage.

Love in High Life.

The Divorced wife.

The Debtor’s Daughter.

The Lady at Home.

Mary Moreton.

The Two Brides.

The First Love.

The Mysterious Marriage.

Captain Blood the Highwayman.

Captain Blood and The Beagles.

Ghost Stories.

Arthur Spring.

The Valley Farm.

And ; Petersons’ Counterfeit Detector And National Bank Note List.