Marian "Clover" Hooper Adams (September 13, 1843 – December 6, 1885) was an American socialite, active society hostess, arbiter of Washington, DC, and an accomplished amateur photographer.

After her suicide, he commissioned the famous Adams Memorial, which features an enigmatic androgynous bronze sculpture by Augustus Saint-Gaudens, to stand at the site of her, and his, grave.

However, in letters to her friend Anne Palmer Fell, he opened up about his 12 years of happiness with Clover and his difficulty in dealing with her loss.

[8][9] From her reports written in letters, it was widely speculated that actually Clover Hooper Adams was the "anonymous" author of Democracy: An American Novel (1880), which was not credited to her husband until 43 years later.

[12] Besides the images, Clover also left behind a great deal of information about her photography, including meticulous chronological notes she kept while working in her darkroom, listing photographs and commenting on exposures, lighting, etc., and the references in her letters.

While alone in her bedroom in her temporary home on H Street on Sunday, December 6, 1885, she swallowed potassium cyanide, which she used in developing her photographs, and died at age 42.

[13] Her husband commissioned sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens and architect Stanford White to create a memorial to mark her grave in Rock Creek Cemetery.

In a letter from December 5, 1886, to Clover's friend Anne Palmer Fell, Henry Adams wrote, "During the last eighteen months I have not had the good luck to attend my own funeral, but with that exception I have buried pretty nearly everything I lived for.

In a letter to a friend, Henry James wrote, "poor Mrs. Adams found, the other day, the solution of the knottiness of existence.