Democracy

Published anonymously in 1880 by Henry Holt and Company, Democracy: An American Novel was the secret work of Henry Adams (1838-1918), the historian whose grandfather and great-grandfather had both occupied the White House. The story follows Madeleine Lee, a wealthy young widow who moves to Washington to study political power at its source and finds herself courted by Senator Silas Ratcliffe, a man whose corruption is matched only by his plausibility, a figure readers linked to James G. Blaine. The novel sold widely in America and Britain while guessing its author became a society game; the publisher revealed Adams’s hand only after his death. It remains one of the sharpest fictional portraits of Gilded Age Washington. Free PDF download available on BDeBooks.