The Education of Mrs. Henry Adams

Rating:
Summary: Excellent bibliography
Review: 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' ideal American girls, and might have become James' 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 (in her mid-30s) he died, she fell into 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.