American novelist, journalist, friend of Edgard Allan Poe and political activist (the secret society he created, The Brotherhood of the Union / Brotherhood of America, was to have as its goal the amelioration of social ills and injustice; the group survived into the 1990s). Gothically speaking, Lippard is of significance primarily for one work, The Quaker City, or Monk of Monk's Hall (1844-45), a weird, over-the-top, thickly plotted novel of lust, murder, ghosts, and political diatribes -- a novel defended by some on the grounds of social criticism but seen by others as little more than pornographic and sadistic sensationalism. Some of Lippard's other works, such as The Ladye Annabel, show Gothic influence in their descriptions of torture, decaying corpses, and other elements of literary horror.
