Democracy / Esther / Mont Saint Michel and Chartres / The Education of Henry Adams

Library of America #14

by Henry Adams, Ernest Samuels (Editor), Jayne Samuels (Editor)

This Library of America volume includes the best-known works of Henry Adams, one of the most powerful and original minds to illuminate the American scene from the Civil War to World War I. Now brought together for the first time in a single volume, these works show the many forms—fiction, poetry, philosophical and historical speculation, autobiography—in which Adams gave expression to his vision of the meaning of the unsettling changes in American life and values.

Each of the two novels, Democracy and Esther, chooses a woman on whom to center the effects of social change. In Democracy, Madeleine Lee, an emancipated and idealistic young widow, moves to Washington to learn the nature of political power and is disillusioned upon discovering the intrigues of rampant corruption. The free-thinking heroine in Esther, caught in the warfare between science and religion, finds that she cannot surrender her moral independence, even to marry a clergyman.

Adams, though a man of the modern world, remained in temperament a child of the eighteenth century, his political ideals shaped by his presidential ancestors, great-grandfather John Adams and grandfather John Quincy Adams. The failure of those ideals to withstand the challenges of an industrialized America drove him to seek refuge in the study of the medieval age of faith in France. Out of it came his skeptic’s “Prayer to the Virgin of Chartres.” Her presence dominates the book that followed—Mont Saint Michel and Chartres. In evocative and sensitive prose Adams moves from the architecture, sculpture, and stained glass of Chartres to the religion, literature, politics, social order, and crusades of the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries. Adams translates the poetry of courtly love and recounts the drama of Eleanor of Aquitaine’s life and the timeless love of Abelard and Heloise. The narrative rises at the end to the brilliantly re-enacted drama of St. Thomas Aquinas’ victory over the rival philosophers.

If Mont Saint Michel portrayed a world unified by a common faith, The Education of Henry Adams portrayed a world irresistibly moving toward chaos. The world once unified by the Virgin was now ruled by the impersonal Dynamo and was already confronted by the “metaphysical bomb” of radium and the prospect of infinite energy for man’s use. Adams balances, with extraordinary urbanity and wit, the rival claims he found as much in himself as in modern civilization. Together, these two works still pose an urgent question: can the human mind ultimately control the monstrous aggregates of power which it has wrung from nature?

Genres: American History, Literature, American, Nonfiction, History, Biography, Memoir

1246 pages, Hardcover

First published July 4, 2009

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.

Noted Henry Brooks Adams wrote his nine-volume History of the United States during the Administrations of Jefferson and Madison (1889-1891) and also The Education of Henry Adams , a famous autobiography, in 1918.

This oldest and most distinguished family in Boston produced John Adams and John Qunicy Adams, two American presidents, and thus gave Henry the opportunity to pursue a wide-ranging variety of intellectual interests during the course of his life. Functioning in the worlds of both practical men and affairs as a journalist and an assistant to his father, an American diplomat in Washington and London, and of ideas as a prolific writer, as the editor of the prestigious North American Review, and as a professor of medieval, European, and American history at Harvard, Adams of the few men of his era attempted to understand art, thought and culture as one complex force field of interacting energies.

He published Mont Saint Michel and Chartres , his masterwork in this dazzling effort, in 1904. Taken together with his other books, Adams in this spiritual, monumental volume attempts to bring together into a vast synthesis all of his knowledge of politics, economics, psychology, science, philosophy, art, and literature to attempt to understand the place of the individual in society. They constitute one of the greatest philosophical meditations on the human condition in all of literature.

Reviews

[Paul Jellinek · Rating 5 out of 5]

A remarkable compilation of four books, three of which I have now read (have not yet read "Esther"). "Democracy" is fun and fairly accessible--maybe 3 stars--but "St. Michelle" and "The Education" are on a whole other level (6 stars each, which together with "Democracy" averages out to a 5 :)). Neither is exactly "fun," but both are richly rewarding in their own inimitable way, and both are laced with Adams's dry (and at times caustic) wit. I read "The Education" twice because I had the flu the first time I read it and wasn't sure if I was hallucinating or if that was just Adams being Adams. Yup, it was the latter.

[Rick · Rating 5 out of 5]

Henry Adams’s two novels, DEMOCRACY and ESTHER, although no immortal classics, are workmanlike and enjoyable. The former was widely read at the time for its depiction of political corruption in Washington, and the latter examines the conflicts that arise when a fiercely independent artist falls in love with a minister.

MONT ST. MICHEL AND CHARTRES is Adams’s fascinating reflection on 12th and 13th century architecture, philosophy and society, an interest he mainly acquired when he taught medieval history at Harvard in the 1870’s.

MONT ST. MICHEL AND CHARTRES is also the prolegomena to THE EDUCATION OF HENRY ADAMS, which may well be the best autobiography ever written by an American. Grandson and great-grandson of two American presidents, Adams recounts his time as private secretary to his father, who was Ambassador to the Court of St. James, and his subsequent involvement in American politics and history.

The EDUCATION is written completely in the third-person, which I found unsettling until I recognized it as the natural result of a modest New England upbringing. The self-denigration, however, even if one admits that Adams’s standards were far higher than yours or mine, was a little much, and I came to see it as primarily a pose.

I strongly recommend this Library of America volume to anyone with an interest in 19th century American history or culture.

[Matt · Rating 5 out of 5]

Isaiah Berlin said that some people, those who know one thing, are hedgehogs, and some, those who know many things, are foxes. Henry Adams was both. The Library of America Edition has his study of 19th century multiplicity, The Education of Henry Adams, and his work on 13th century unity, Mont St. Michelle and Chartres. How a Boston Brahmin and heir to the Unitarian tradition became interested in Medieval Christianity baffles me, but I love it--there are too few works that combine the two things I love Science and the Middle Ages. Every line from both books is disgustingly quotable, but the chapter from The Education, "The Virgin and the Dynamo" stands out. I am sorry that this glowing review sounds like something written for the back of a penguin classics edition, but I have been studying "science" long enough to almost have forgotten how to write in anything onther than the passive voice. Mea culpa, kyrie eleison etc. etc.

[Gilbert Wesley Purdy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have not, and probably will not, read either of the novels. Adams's non-fiction works are among the finer ever written by an American. Mont St. Michel and Chartres is a late and eccentric work. Its beauties made it a precursor to quite a number of such books on Medieval churches and monasteries. Together with Ruskin's Bible of Amiens, the book probably created a sub-genre. The Education of Henry Adams is an autobiography and European and American history, written in the third person, by someone who witnessed a great deal of that history first hand. While always reserved, Adams's observations are often trenchant and always celebrate the social and technological advances of his country.

[Alismcg · Rating 4 out of 5]

This LOA edition of Henry Adams' writings includes his two novels ("Democracy" and "Esther") as well as two of his major literary NF accomplishments ("Mont Saint Michel and Chartres" and "The Education of Henry Adams").

Brilliant writing. Deeply philosophical , and yes 😂 at times extremely challenging to follow. While reading the final title , I found myself searching out further historical information that I might understand more fully what he shared (especially re. the Civil War and Britain's underhanded involvement to aid the Confederacy).

A sprinkling of anti-semitic remarks throughout. Also quite interesting that Adams does not directly give any indication that he even marries Clover and loses her to suicide, though he mentions his friendships with the other men and women in the "Five of Hearts" which played such an intimate role in his life; he also indirectly writes about the 'bronze figure' he had asked St Gaudens to sculpt for him (that stands vigil near Clover's grave).

Truly a tremendously valuable read. 4.25 ⭐s

[Kevin Christiansen · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had read The Education previously. This time I enjoyed Mont Saint Michel and Chartres.

[Shawn Thrasher · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read Democracy and was absorbed by it. Adams's book is a juicy, provocative example of the old proverb "the more things change, the more they stay the same" applied to American political power. Written in 1880, (until 1918 published anonymously) the book has an incredibly modern feel to it; the same political perils that haunt our democracy now -- influence, money, power, sex scandal - were alive and well in 1880 too. It's not simply a political treatise though; the characters are incredibly well drawn, the plot is scandalously fun; Henry Adams wrote good, thought-provoking fiction (or at least he did in Democracy). The fact that the novel was published anonymously seems to prove that much of what Henry Adams was writing was based on truth; he didn't just invent characters and plot, but obviously made use of the people, places, and events with which he was familiar. My only let-down was the end; it felt melodramatic, and the "scandal" that Senator Ratcliffe created for himself did not seem to be all that scandalous (perhaps after so many political scandals I've become jaded). Even then, it was a fantastic book; I wonder why it's never been made into a movie?

[Gary Land · Rating 4 out of 5]

Adams is not the most scintillating author but he wrote thoughtful books that are well worth reading. Democracy and Esther are minor novels that nonetheless give insight into post civil war America. The Education similarly offers a picture of the changes, mostly intellectual, that took place over the nineteenth century, though told from the standpoint of a disillusioned essentially 18th century mind. Never having visited Chartres cathedral I found the first half of that book difficult to understand but the latter part was much more accessible.

[A · Rating 5 out of 5]

An heir to the Adams name give us the tale of his life and the American landscape from between the mid-19th century through the early 20th century.

This wonderful and very personal account presents America's civil turmoils, its industrialization, and the rise of modernity through the prism of a man whose name harks back to a by-gone Revolutionary era.

[Shala Howell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Have only read Esther in this collection. Read it because Henry based its main character on his wife Clover Adams. It fascinates me that he left her almost completely out of his Education (a tidbit I learned after reading a biography of Clover and verified by skimming Education), so I wanted to know what Henry would say when he was willing to write of her.

[Frank · Rating 5 out of 5]

A classic in autobiography. A bit disingenuous at times but nonetheless a rare and exceptional glimpse into the life of one of the most interesting people living around the turn of the century.

[Martin Bihl · Rating 3 out of 5]

Democracy - finished 06/30/13

Esther - finished 06/11/14

Mont St. Michel & Chartres - finished 11/23/15

The Education of Henry Adams - finished 08/26/16

Poems - finished 01/08/17