The Killers: A Narrative of Real Life in Philadelphia

by George Lippard

PHILADELPHIA, the 1840s: a corrupt banker disowns his dissolute son, who then reappears as a hardened smuggler in the contraband slave trade. Another son, hidden from his father since birth and condemned as a former felon, falls in with a ferocious street gang led by his elder brother and his revenge-hungry comrade from Cuba. His adopted sister, a beautiful actress, is kidnapped, and her remorseful black captor becomes her savior as his tavern is engulfed in flames. Vendetta, gang violence, racial tensions, and international intrigue collide in an explosive novella based on the events leading up to an infamous 1849 Philadelphia race riot. The Killers takes the reader on a fast-paced journey from the hallowed halls of academia at Yale College to the dismal solitary cells of Eastern State Penitentiary and through southwest Philadelphia's community of free African Americans. Though the book's violence was ignited by the particulars of Philadelphia life and politics, the flames were fanned by nationwide anxieties about race, labor, immigration, and sexuality that emerged in the young republic.

Penned by fiery novelist, labor activist, and reformer George Lippard (1822-1854) and first serialized in 1849, The Killers was the work of a wildly popular writer who outsold Edgar Allan Poe and Nathaniel Hawthorne in his lifetime. Long out of print, the novella now appears in an edition supplemented with a brief biography of the author, an untangling of the book's complex textual history, and excerpts from related contemporaneous publications. Editors Matt Cohen and Edlie L. Wong set the scene of an antebellum Philadelphia rife with racial and class divisions, implicated in the international slave trade, and immersed in Cuban annexation schemes to frame this compact and compelling tale.

Serving up in a short form the same heady mix of sensational narrative, local color, and impassioned politics found in Lippard's sprawling The Quaker City, or The Monks of Monks Hall, The Killers is here brought back to lurid life.

256 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1849

About the author

George Lippard, American novelist, playwright, journalist and social activist.

Reviews

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars. Read this for my American Gothic Lit class. This story, whose title is based on a real-life historical street gang, is set in Philadelphia in the 1840s. It’s extremely sensational. That part I enjoyed. But most of the characters weren’t solidly differentiated. The whole story centers on race relations and the downtrodden. It’s worth a read, but it’s not something I would return to.

[Donald]

"The Killers" is the first George Lippard novel that I have read. I had a very specific reasons to read this book - to learn about the "Flora and Fauna" of Philadelphia in the 1840's, for a project I was working on. The novel gave me mixed results. I did learn a bit about the streets in the Moyamensing section of Phila where the riot occurred, and did learn some of the products that people used in their daily lives. Lippard spends quite a bit of time describing the various Fire Companies in the city, some of which acted like the Fire Companies in "Faahrenheit 451." However, Lippard's concerns were not to display a sense of Naturalism, but instead to rail about the various corrupt practices in the society of the time - and their were many.

The Novel was based on a real race riot and fire that occurred in October, 1849. (Philadelphia had many race riots in the years leading up to this one.) This particular riot was sparked by antagonisms between the City's free Blacks and Irish immigrants competing for a limited amount of jobs and housing. Lippard does paint a grim picture of the lives of these people.

The plot is interesting, but not well developed, nor is the characterization. He plays with the idea of class antagonisms and slavery that was backed by Northern business men like one of the main characters. There's even a slave plot involving that characters son and running slaves from Cuba.

The novel is wrapped up very quickly, and it left me pretty cold. It is definitely a much dated attempt at fiction. The narration is of the 3rd person type that keeps drawing attention to itself.
"When we last left our hero a few chapters back...." That sort of thing. There are occasional flashes of genius, but they are short lived. Lippard was firstly a social critic and reformer, his novels just gave a transport for those ideas. There were some inconsistencies in Lippard's ideas. Although a critic of chattel slavery, he was a supporter of the Annexation of Texas, Manifest Destiny and the war with Mexico. He eventually did question those issues.

Lippard is probably most famous today for his friendship with Edgar Allan Poe during the latter's
years in Philadelphia (1838-1844). Poe did stop in Philadelphia just before he died in Baltimore,
having visited Lippard while he was there.

It is hard to imagine anyone being drawn to this book who is not a scholar of Literature or History, or having some particular need, as I did.

[Jonathan Eisen · Rating 2 out of 5]

'The Killers' is an interesting read for its presentation of Philadelphia in 1849. Its also a cool glimpse at the beginning of crime and hardboiled detetective fiction that would become popular almost a century later. Other than that, the writing is pretty weak--especially the dialogue--and the characters are flat and undeveloped. Not recommended unless you are interesterested those first two things I mentioned.

[Hannah Nicole · Rating 4 out of 5]

I genuinely enjoyed this read, and I will be pursuing more Lippard fiction in the future. I only read “The Killers” in this, but I’ll be exploring the appendices soon. “The Killers” had a fun amount of drama that I feel belongs in literature from a more recent time, and it boggles my mind to think it is a novella from 1849.

[Aaron E · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fun read. Wildly entertaining. A great look on 19th century life despite the fact it was fictional. I would have liked it to be longer, but it was a great read nonetheless.