Quaker City

The Quaker City, or The Monks of Monk Hall was originally published in 1845, and is considered the first muckraking novel. It is a lurid and thickly plotted exposé of city life in antebellum Philadelphia, exposing the hypocrisy of the Philadelphia elite as well as the darker underside of American capitalism and urbanization. Lippard's Philadelphia is populated with parsimonious bankers, foppish drunkards, adulterers, sadistic murderers, reverend rakes, and confidence men. - Summary by the Narrat