The Red City

Last updated February 28, 2019

The Red City (1909) is a historical novel by the American writer Silas Weir Mitchell. The novel is set in Philadelphia in the 1790s, during the second term of George Washington's Presidency when the city served as the temporary capital of the United States. Its general theme is of the city's "greatness" during this era. The "red city" of the title is a reference to the red brick used for many of Philadelphia's public and private buildings in the eighteenth century.

Silas Weir Mitchell was an American physician and writer known for his discovery of causalgia and erythromelalgia.

Philadelphia, sometimes known colloquially as Philly, is the largest city in the U.S. state and Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and the sixth-most populous U.S. city, with a 2017 census-estimated population of 1,580,863. Since 1854, the city has been coterminous with Philadelphia County, the most populous county in Pennsylvania and the urban core of the eighth-largest U.S. metropolitan statistical area, with over 6 million residents as of 2017. Philadelphia is also the economic and cultural anchor of the greater Delaware Valley, located along the lower Delaware and Schuylkill Rivers, within the Northeast megalopolis. The Delaware Valley's population of 7.2 million ranks it as the eighth-largest combined statistical area in the United States.

George Washington was an American political leader, military general, statesman, and Founding Father, who also served as the first President of the United States from 1789 to 1797. Washington commanded Patriot forces in the new nation's vital American Revolutionary War, and led them to victory over the British. Washington also presided at the Constitutional Convention of 1787, which established the new federal government. For his manifold leadership during the American Revolution, he has been called the "Father of His Country".

The book depicts the Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1793, which engulfed the city.

Bibliography

Thomas George E., Cohen Jeffrey A. & Lewis, Michael J. Frank Furness: The Complete Works. Princeton Press, 1996.

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