At last, Clover Adams has the biography she deserves. Long glimpsed only as the wife of a famous man or the dazzling hostess to Gilded Age luminaries, she emerges here as a complex and fascinating woman — a thinker, writer, and photographer, but also a deeply troubled soul... This is a compelling read, so beautifully written and persuasively argued it’s hard to put down."

—Martha A. Sandweiss, author of Passing Strange

The true life story of one of the most fascinating women of the Gilded Age. Clover Adams married the Pulitzer-Prize winning historian Henry Adams, and together they reigned at the epicenter of Washington society.

Clover was fiercely intelligent, an accomplished photographer, and was said to be the inspiration for Henry James' character, Daisy Miller. Yet at age 42, she took her own life.

Clover's story has long been shrouded in secrecy, but there are clues to the mystery of her bright life and shadowy death in the compelling and haunting photographs she took of a now vanished world.

This program is for those interested in history, photography, women's studies...and for anyone interested in exploring the deep human need for self expression, meaning and connection.