The Photographs of American Socialite Marian "Clover" Adams (1843-1885)

FAIN: FB-51616-05

Natalie Anne Dykstra
Hope College (Holland, MI 49423-3663)

My project is a book-length examination of the life and photographs of Marian "Clover" Adams. Clover’s work as an amateur photographer has been discussed most often as an addendum to the story of her marriage to Henry Adams, and she is remembered, if at all, by what he left to memorialize her after her suicide in 1885: a statue by Augustus Saint-Gaudens in Rock Creek Park in Washington D.C. This representation has suspended Clover in an interpretive amber, even as her photographs have remained largely unseen. This book intends a remedy by publishing many of her photographs together for the first time, introduced by a biographical essay and followed by a critical essay that places her images in the context of 1880s America.