Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk
Monk, Maria. New York, DeWitt and Davenport. 1855. Very faded and discolored boards, edges and spine bumped and fraying. Spine cracked in middle of book. Maria Monk pretended to have escaped from a Montreal convent, and upon arrival in New York in 1835, dictated her lurid tale of misconduct on the part of the priests and superiors to a Mr. Dwight (tentatively identified as Theodore Dwight). Her publications stirred up a violent storm of anti-Catholic sentiment, depending for much of its vigor on the then prevalent discrimination against increased immigration. Although she was exposed as an adventuress and liar by a thorough investigation of her charges, her books served as models of sorts for a flood of similar grim stuff, much of it pirated from her books and sold in the form of chapbooks. It is nonetheless something of a milestone in American popular literature, as well as being a prime example of the gullibility of the masses in their search for a hook upon which to hang their prejudices. Ralph Thompson, "The Maria Monk affair, " in The Colophon, XVII (1934), article number 6. "Discredited as she was in her later years, Maria Monk's books continued to attract a widening circle of readers from among the gullible and the bigoted minority that would still believe her old wives' tales of popish plots and priestly immorality. The three hundred thousand copies of the Awful disclosures sold prior to the Civil War and the numerous editions that have appeared since justly earned for it the questionable distinction of being the 'Uncle Tom's cabin of Know-Nothingism' and the most influential single work of anti-Catholic propaganda in America's history. " Ray Allen Billington, "Introduction" to Awful disclosures, (1962), p. [xxvii]. Sabin 49993. This book is still being debated 170 years after the first publication. Media shipping $4.50
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