Several of the articles reprinted here have been previously attributed to Lippard (E1-2, E11; the latter is also included under the “City Police” series as A11). But the others are newly attributed, on the grounds of their remarkable resemblance to those previously attributed, as well as the thematic continuity and tonal consistency of all of them. Together they make up a coherent account of this episode in American literary history. Throughout these articles, Lippard admired Dickens and welcomed the prospect of his visit to Philadelphia; but he deplored the “insipid adulation” (E2) bestowed upon Dickens, scornfully characterized as the “sycophancy of ’a free and enlightened people’” (E11), and resented deeply the attempt by a self-appointed clique of “small potatoes literati” (passim) to monopolize Dickens and cozy up to his celebrity, while excluding socially-unconnected neophytes like Lippard who, moreover, worked for penny papers of radical democratic orientation. He credited Dickens, however, with the ability to see through the fakery and stupidity of his abject American lionizers.

Of particular interest here is the series of three reports, published on three days in a row, detailing (and mocking) a fancy ball held in New York City to celebrate Dickens’ visit there (E3-5). All of Lippard’s ambivalence about the Dickens phenomenon can be detected here. In the first (E3), there was an incipient tone of mockery (“If Boz had been a very God, he could not have received more adulation and worship”), but all the details of the extravagant event were nevertheless recorded with evident relish. The next day, curiously, the same event was re-told, but with a conspicuously heavier dose of satire, seemingly reflecting sardonically upon the previous day’s admiring attention to the rich details of conspicuous social display. Now Lippard bluntly called this event the “tom-foolery of silly-minded Americans” (E4). One day later again, he ratcheted up the scorn another level: the New York ball was “a complete burlesque of the American character . . . because of the egregious buffoonery of our literary monkeys” (E5). It is as if we can see Lippard’s critique of the false and invidious structure of his literary environment taking increasingly severe shape day by day.