The Quaker City, Or The Monks Of Monk Hall
''The Quaker City; or, The Monks of Monk Hall'' is a city mystery novel by Philadelphia writer George Lippard, first published in 1845. Plot summary ''The Quaker City'' describes four main characters during the course of three days and nights. The story is set mostly in a Philadelphia mansion named "Monk Hall", which serves as a private gentlemen's club and is also secretly a brothel and opium den patronized by some of the city's most respected citizens. The main characters engage in various acts of debauchery, including the attempt at deflowering a young maiden. Devil-Bug, one of the book's most memorable characters, serves as the hall's caretaker and doorman. Inspiration ''The Quaker City'' is based partly on the March 1843 New Jersey trial of Singleton Mercer.Cleman, John. "Irresistible Impulses: Edgar Allan Poe and the Insanity Defense", collected in ''Bloom's BioCritiques: Edgar Allan Poe'', edited by Harold Bloom. Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publishers, 2001: 67 Mercer was ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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WikiProject Novels
A WikiProject, or Wikiproject, is a Wikimedia movement affinity group for contributors with shared goals. WikiProjects are prevalent within the largest wiki, Wikipedia, and exist to varying degrees within sister projects such as Wiktionary, Wikiquote, Wikidata, and Wikisource. They also exist in different languages, and translation of articles is a form of their collaboration. During the COVID-19 pandemic, CBS News noted the role of Wikipedia's WikiProject Medicine in maintaining the accuracy of articles related to the disease. Another WikiProject that has drawn attention is WikiProject Women Scientists, which was profiled by '' Smithsonian'' for its efforts to improve coverage of women scientists which the profile noted had "helped increase the number of female scientists on Wikipedia from around 1,600 to over 5,000". On Wikipedia Some Wikipedia WikiProjects are substantial enough to engage in cooperative activities with outside organizations relevant to the field at issue. For e ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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WikiProject Books
A WikiProject, or Wikiproject, is a Wikimedia movement affinity group for contributors with shared goals. WikiProjects are prevalent within the largest wiki, Wikipedia, and exist to varying degrees within sister projects such as Wiktionary, Wikiquote, Wikidata, and Wikisource. They also exist in different languages, and translation of articles is a form of their collaboration. During the COVID-19 pandemic, CBS News noted the role of Wikipedia's WikiProject Medicine in maintaining the accuracy of articles related to the disease. Another WikiProject that has drawn attention is WikiProject Women Scientists, which was profiled by '' Smithsonian'' for its efforts to improve coverage of women scientists which the profile noted had "helped increase the number of female scientists on Wikipedia from around 1,600 to over 5,000". On Wikipedia Some Wikipedia WikiProjects are substantial enough to engage in cooperative activities with outside organizations relevant to the field at issue. For e ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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George Lippard
George Lippard (April 10, 1822February 9, 1854) was a 19th-century American novelist, journalist, playwright, social activist, and labor organizer. He was a popular author in antebellum America. A friend of Edgar Allan Poe, Lippard advocated a socialist political philosophy and sought justice for the working class in his writings. He founded a secret benevolent society, Brotherhood of the Union, investing in it all the trappings of a religion; the society, a precursor to labor organizations, survived until 1994. He authored two principal kinds of stories: Gothic tales about the immorality, horror, vice, and debauchery of large cities, such as ''The Monks of Monk Hall'' (1844), reprinted as '' The Quaker City'' (1844); and historical fiction of a type called romances, such as ''Blanche of Brandywine'' (1846), ''Legends of Mexico'' (1847), and the popular ''Legends of the Revolution'' (1847). Both kinds of stories, sensational and immensely popular when written, are mostly forgotte ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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City Mystery
City mysteries are a 19th-century genre of popular novel, in which characters explore the secret underworlds of cities and reveal corruption and exploitation, depicting violence and deviant sexuality. They were popular in both Europe and the United States. All were inspired by the very successful serial novel ''The Mysteries of Paris'' (1842) by Eugène Sue, such as these: * '' Les Vrais Mystères de Paris'' (1844) by Eugène François Vidocq * '' Los misterios de Madrid: miscelánea de costumbres buenas y malas con viñetas y láminas á pedir de boca'' (1844) by Juan Martínez Villergas * ''The Quaker City, or The Monks of Monk Hall'' (1845) by George Lippard * '' Los Misterios del Plata'' (1846) by Juana Manso * '' Venus in Boston'' (1849) by George Thompson * '' City Crimes'' (1849) by George Thompson * '' Life and Adventures of Jack Engle'' (1852) by Walt Whitman * '' The Mysteries of Lisbon'' (1854) by Camilo Castelo Branco * ''The Slums of Petersburg'' (1866) by Vse ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Philadelphia
Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Since 1854, the city has been coextensive with Philadelphia County, the most populous county in Pennsylvania and the urban core of the Delaware Valley, the nation's seventh-largest and one of world's largest metropolitan regions, with 6.245 million residents . The city's population at the 2020 census was 1,603,797, and over 56 million people live within of Philadelphia. Philadelphia was founded in 1682 by William Penn, an English Quaker. The city served as capital of the Pennsylvania Colony during the British colonial era and went on to play a historic and vital role as the central meeting place for the nation's founding fathers whose plans and actions in Philadelphia ultimately inspired the American Revolution and the nation's inde ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Brothel
A brothel, bordello, ranch, or whorehouse is a place where people engage in sexual activity with prostitutes. However, for legal or cultural reasons, establishments often describe themselves as massage parlors, bars, strip clubs, body rub parlours, studios, or by some other description. Sex work in a brothel is considered safer than street prostitution. Legal status On 2 December 1949, the United Nations General Assembly approved the Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Persons and of the Exploitation of the Prostitution of Others. The Convention came into effect on 25 July 1951 and by December 2013 had been ratified by 82 states. The Convention seeks to combat prostitution, which it regards as "incompatible with the dignity and worth of the human person." Parties to the Convention agreed to abolish regulation of individual prostitutes, and to ban brothels and procuring. Some countries not parties to the convention also ban prostitution or the operation of broth ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Insanity Defense
The insanity defense, also known as the mental disorder defense, is an affirmative defense by excuse in a criminal case, arguing that the defendant is not responsible for their actions due to an episodic psychiatric disease at the time of the criminal act. This is contrasted with an excuse of provocation, in which the defendant is responsible, but the responsibility is lessened due to a temporary mental state.''Criminal Law - Cases and Materials'', 7th ed. 2012, Wolters Kluwer Law & Business; John Kaplan, Robert Weisberg, Guyora Binder, , It is also contrasted with a finding that a defendant cannot stand trial in a criminal case because a mental disease prevents them from effectively assisting counsel, from a civil finding in trusts and estates where a will is nullified because it was made when a mental disorder prevented a testator from recognizing the natural objects of their bounty, and from involuntary civil commitment to a mental institution, when anyone is found to be ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe (; Edgar Poe; January 19, 1809 – October 7, 1849) was an American writer, poet, editor, and literary critic. Poe is best known for his poetry and short stories, particularly his tales of mystery and the macabre. He is widely regarded as a central figure of Romanticism in the United States, and of American literature. Poe was one of the country's earliest practitioners of the short story, and considered to be the inventor of the detective fiction genre, as well as a significant contributor to the emerging genre of science fiction. Poe is the first well-known American writer to earn a living through writing alone, resulting in a financially difficult life and career. Poe was born in Boston, the second child of actors David and Elizabeth "Eliza" Poe. His father abandoned the family in 1810, and when his mother died the following year, Poe was taken in by John and Frances Allan of Richmond, Virginia. They never formally adopted him, but he was with them well ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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The Tell-Tale Heart
"The Tell-Tale Heart" is a short story by American writer Edgar Allan Poe, first published in 1843. It is related by an unnamed narrator who endeavors to convince the reader of the narrator's sanity while simultaneously describing a murder the narrator committed. The victim was an old man with a filmy pale blue "vulture-eye", as the narrator calls it. The narrator emphasizes the careful calculation of the murder, attempting the perfect crime, complete with dismembering the body in the bathtub and hiding it under the floorboards. Ultimately, the narrator's actions result in hearing a thumping sound, which the narrator interprets as the dead man's beating heart. The story was first published in James Russell Lowell's ''The Pioneer'' in January 1843. "The Tell-Tale Heart" is often considered a classic of the Gothic fiction genre and is one of Poe's best known short stories. The specific motivation for murder (aside from the narrator's hatred of the old man's eye), the relationship ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Uncle Tom's Cabin
''Uncle Tom's Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly'' is an anti-slavery novel by American author Harriet Beecher Stowe. Published in two volumes in 1852, the novel had a profound effect on attitudes toward African Americans and slavery in the U.S., and is said to have "helped lay the groundwork for the mericanCivil War". Stowe, a Connecticut-born woman of English descent, was part of the religious Beecher family and an active abolitionist. She wrote the sentimental novel to depict the reality of slavery while also asserting that Christian love could overcome slavery. The novel focuses on the character of Uncle Tom, a long-suffering black slave around whom the stories of the other characters revolve. In the United States, ''Uncle Tom's Cabin'' was the best-selling novel and the second best-selling book of the 19th century, following the Bible. It is credited with helping fuel the abolitionist cause in the 1850s. The influence attributed to the book was so great that a likely ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Muckraker
The muckrakers were reform-minded journalists, writers, and photographers in the Progressive Era in the United States (1890s–1920s) who claimed to expose corruption and wrongdoing in established institutions, often through sensationalist publications. The modern term generally references investigative journalism or watchdog journalism; investigative journalists in the US are occasionally called "muckrakers" informally. The muckrakers played a highly visible role during the Progressive Era. Muckraking magazines—notably ''McClure's'' of the publisher S. S. McClure—took on corporate monopolies and political machines, while trying to raise public awareness and anger at urban poverty, unsafe working conditions, prostitution, and child labor. Most of the muckrakers wrote nonfiction, but fictional exposés often had a major impact, too, such as those by Upton Sinclair. In contemporary American usage, the term can refer to journalists or others who "dig deep for the facts" or, ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Library Company Of Philadelphia
The Library Company of Philadelphia (LCP) is a non-profit organization based in Philadelphia. Founded in 1731 by Benjamin Franklin as a library, the Library Company of Philadelphia has accumulated one of the most significant collections of historically valuable manuscripts and printed material in the United States. The current collection size is approximately 500,000 books and 70,000 other items, including 2,150 items that once belonged to Franklin, the Mayflower Compact, major collections of 17th-century and Revolution-era pamphlets and ephemera, maps, and whole libraries assembled in the 18th and 19th centuries. The collection also includes first editions of ''Moby-Dick'' and ''Leaves of Grass''. Early history The Library Company was an offshoot of the Junto, a discussion group in colonial Philadelphia, that gravitated around Benjamin Franklin. On July 1, 1731, Franklin and a number of his fellow members among the Junto drew up articles of agreement to found a library, for ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |