George Lippard's Quaker City: or, The Monks of Monk-Hall (1844-1845) was one of the most influential works of sensational urban fiction ever published in the United States. Lippard based his book on the 1843 case of Singleton Mercer, a young Philadelphian acquitted for the murder of Mahlon Heberton, who had lured Mercer's sister into a house of assignation and then raped her at gunpoint. In Quaker City Lippard wrote to condemn upper-class men who took advantage of innocent women and girls, but he also used seduction as a metaphor for the oppression of the helpless. His stated purpose allowed him to escape responsibility for the titillating material that laced Quaker City, but his frank descriptions of seduction attempts seem to give the lie to his assertion that his novel was "destitute of any idea of sensualism." Lippard's lingering descriptions of "heaving bosoms" and attempted rapes...