Clover Adams

Marian "Clover" Hooper Adams, wife of historian Henry Adams, was a well-educated Boston socialite, often considered the inspiration for Henry James's Daisy Miller and The Portrait of a Lady. The Adams home was a center for intellectual social life in 1880s Washington, DC. Witty, clever, and engaging, Clover sometimes suffered from depression but eventually found creative refuge in photography. Shockingly, she committed suicide at age 42 by drinking a chemical used in developing her photographs. Speculation about the cause included a family history of depression/suicide; her father's recent death; her inability to have children; and her husband's alleged extramarital affair. Earlier biographies by Otto Friedrich (Clover) and Eugenia Kaledin (The Education of Mrs. Henry Adams) left unsolved the mystery surrounding her death. Dykstra (English, Hope Coll.) draws heavily on Clover's photo albums as well as newly found family papers to reveal a new story of her life and death.