Introduction

When Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk was first published in New York in 1836, it was immediately popular and controversial. The story of a young woman who entered a convent in Montreal only to become the victim of sexual abuse and the observer of infanticide, the book inspired fierce reactions by Protestants and Catholics alike. Although its narrator Maria Monk is identified as the author, debates quickly ensued about who really wrote the book and whether its story was real or fiction.

Despite its extraordinary popularity in the nineteenth century, Awful Disclosures is usually dismissed today as a bizarre literary hoax, when it is not forgotten altogether. In this introduction, we provide readers with some historical, political, and literary contexts for understanding the book, its reception, and its publication history. Why might it be important to remember, and to restore to our literary history, such a largely forgotten novel now?