Marian Hooper Adams - Clover, as 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 are explored in this first paperback edition of Eugenia Kaledin's pathbreaking biography. The book re-creates the intense intellectual, cultural, and moral life of Boston and New England before, during, and after the Civil War and helps us to understand what could drive such a gifted, intelligent, and privileged woman to take her own life. Included is a portfolio of Adams's photographs of her husband and his famous circle.