The Education of Mrs. Henry Adams

by Eugenia Kaledin

Book Overview

Marian Hooper Adams--Clover, as her friends called her--was an accomplished photographer and a witty, irreverent free spirit who moved easily within the cultural circles of nineteenth-century Boston. Why, then, in 1882, at the age of forty-two, did she swallow a lethal dose of potassium cyanide? And why did her husband of thirteen years fail even to mention her in his autobiography, The Education of Henry Adams?

These and other questions...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0870239139
• ISBN13: 9780870239137
• Release Date: July 1994
• Publisher: University of Massachusetts Press
• Length: 328 Pages
• Weight: 1.15 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.5" x 8.3"
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

A lovely, simple biography of a forgotten woman...sad

A very well written, easy-to-read biography for those interested in Henry Adams's wife, who committed suicide amidst the wealth and finery of her husband's successful career. Very interesting story. Wonderful book!

Excellent bibliography

This book (which began life as a dissertation) will very much interest women's history buffs and students of American literature but is less likely to please physicians or students of abnormal psychology. Clover Hooper comes out of a Boston family almost as intriguing as that of the Adams. She is one of Henry James's ideal American girls, and might have become James's wife had he been inclined to marry. She maintained a glittering establishment while Henry Adams was in Washington, and many of her points of view are reflected in The Education of Henry Adams. Clover's father was her closest intellectual companion and when he died, in her mid 30s, she fell into a depression and within a few months had committed suicide. The Education of Mrs. Henry Adams was published in the late 1970s and includes as complete a bibliography, to that time, as one could wish, including a reference to Susan Phinney Conrad's witty Perish the Thought: Intellectual Women in Romantic America, 1830-1860.