George Lippard (April 10, 1822 – February 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 Brandywin