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5 An Unsuitable Job for a Woman ANN CARSON SOUGHT to make money from her own notoriety. Mary Clarke sought to make money from the notoriety of others. Nothing in Clarke's writing before 1822 indicated that she wanted to do anything other than play it safe with the published work to which she signed her name. She was a widow with children who depended on her labor to make ends meet. Clarke had only been semisuccessful at professional authorship . Her play, The Return from Camp, was performed for a few nights in 1814-. Her magazine, the Intellectual Regale, or Ladies Tea Tray, folded after a little more than a year. Another periodical, The Parterre, had an even shorter life span. She did sell songs and pamphlets here and there, but a small annuity and an income from boarders were a necessary part of her financial stability. She continued to seek out ways to earn money as a writer. When Ann Carson contacted her, Clarke saw the potential value of Carson's life story-the drama, pathos, and illicit relationships were like one of Clarke's stories come to life. When she agreed to write Carson's book, Mary Clarke stepped into the uncharted, but potentially lucrative, territory ofgossip and sensationalism. The idea of profiting from scandal had already occurred to Mary Clarke when Carson approached her in the summer of 1822. Just a few months before their meeting, Clarke anonymously published a transcript of a trial that had caught Philadelphians' attention. In April, Catholic priest William Hogan was accused by his servant, Mary Connell, of attempted rape.! The mayor ultimately dismissed Connell's rape accusation and Hogan was tried on a lesser charge of assault and battery. As mayor's court records and alderman's accounts testify, Philadelphians routinely battered each other in the early nineteenth century. But this case stood out-William Hogan was already a household name for his role in a divisive controversy over the powers of laymen in Philadelphia's Catholic community. And though the rape charge was dismissed, it was public knowledge that a priest had tried to sexually assault a woman who was not An Unsuitable Job for a Woman 91 only his servant but also one ofhis parishioners. Mary Clarke was familiar with Hogan's battle with the bishop of Philadelphia. It was Clarke's pamphlet defending Hogan that brought her writing to Carson's attention.2 Clarke's experience with the Hogan trial transcript (according to Robert Desilver, it sold better than his version ofthe trial) and with Carson's History may have confirmed for her that there was an avid, and growing, audience for sensationalism. Her writings in the 1830S took advantage ofthis demand.3 Clarke seized an opportunity that had only recently become available . The second quarter ofthe nineteenth century was remarkable for an explosion ofprint. There were more readers and more things to read than ever before. More important, the types of things people read were new. Vernacular print culture burgeoned. This material was, according to one scholar, "cheap, sensational, ephemeral, miscellaneous, illustrated, and serialized ."4 Carson's History was all of these. It was sensational in its revelations ofprivate affairs as well as in its unapologetic depiction ofcriminal activities. In 1822, the History stood out as singular. By the early 1830s, its subject matter was common fare in the news, books, and occasionally on the stage. All of Clarke's published writings in the 1830S fit into this "carnival on the page," where curiosities, sensations, and scandals jostled for readers' attention. The History taught her that these topics would sell. Clarke published a melodrama, The Benevolent Lawyers, in 1823. In it a beautiful married woman is victimized by a lecherous villain while her sea captain husband is presumed to be lost at sea. (A circumstance she may have borrowed from Carson's life story). The heroine is a virtuous and devoted wife: certainly not an idea she took away from her contact with Carson. There is a ten-year gap between The Benevolent Lawyers and Clarke's next extant play. Clarke's whereabouts between 1823 and 1833 are a mystery. She disappeared from the Philadelphia city directories, there are no surviving publications for this period, and she volunteered little information about her activities. She also changed her name: in 1823, she began to use Clarke instead of Carr.5 She moved back and forth between Philadelphia and New York City, writing theater reviews in both cities, and...

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