Democracy (Magill’s Survey of American Literature, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Henry Brooks Adams
- First Published: 1880
- Type of Work: Novel
- Genres: Long fiction, Satire, Social issues
- Subjects: Power, personal or social, Politics, Love or romance, Nineteenth century, Washington, D.C., Corruption
- Locales: Washington, D.C.
Because of the sarcastic critique of his contemporary Washington which his first novel offered, Adams decided to publish Democracy: An American Novel anonymously; he succeeded in keeping his secret to his death and continued to move in the society whose moral flaws and rampant corruption he had exposed with such incisiveness.
As the novel opens, the thirty-year-old Madeleine (Mrs. Lightfoot) Lee decides to go to Washington, D.C., to observe the play of power politics in an effort to overcome the sense of hollowness with which the death of her husband, the Southerner...
[The entire page is 1021 words long]
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