Reviews for George Lippard, prophet of protest

The average rating for George Lippard, prophet of protest based on 2 reviews is 5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2012-02-02 00:00:00 Linsl Llskdl Without a doubt the best writer on George Lippard, David S. Reynolds introduces the life and writings of one of America's great and greatly ignored authors. For those interested, be aware that this volume is a condensed version of Reynold's more expansive study on Lippard. But unless you're able to shell out two hundred bucks for the now out-of-print parent volume, I highly recommend its lean and well-dressed son. Though obscure now, Lippard was a highly acclaimed (and defamed) author, selling 60,000 copies of Quaker City, his most accomplished novel, in the first year of its publication. At a time when gothic and sentimental novelists took advantage of a public taste for the mysterious and murderous, Lippard overshadowed his contemporaries with a more socially-probing approach. Not only did he out-sensationalize the sensationalist, he provoked the public to debate on the key political issues of the antebellum era: slavery, poverty, labor rights, bank corruption, religious institutional hypocrisy, women's rights, and socialist ideology. Lippard drew from history to fashion his own historical legends, many of which remain with us today, like the ringing of the Liberty Bell after the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Yep, all Lippard. But he did so with social improvement in mind--emphasizing America's better angels in a historical moment of great upheaval and uncertainty. Lippard belongs to a utopian tradition of authorship. Not only did he witness with a sense of outrage the injustice of his time, he also understood it at a personal level, having been abandoned as a child, raised in poverty, and forced to create a meaningful existence for himself out of thin air. He projected these woes into visions of the future for the sake of the future, that others might not repeat the mistakes of his own time. In that sense, novels like Quaker City should be read alongside Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward and Sinclair Lewis's It Can't Happen Here. Happy Reading!

Review # 2 was written on 2014-07-24 00:00:00 Dawson Overbay Comprehensive study of the election of 1884. I will say that I'm mystified by how inadequate his coverage was of African American politics during this period, especially since he gave such thorough coverage to other groups and issues during this time. I'm curious as to how much research he even did into black newspapers during this period. I know there's a lot out there about African Americans and the election of 1884, because, well, I wrote a chapter of my master's thesis on it. :)