Ada Clare

{{Infobox person

| image = Ada Clare.jpg

| image_size =

| caption =

| name = Ada Clare

| birth_name = Ada Agnes Jane McElhenney

| birth_date = July 1834

| birth_place = Charleston, South Carolina, U.S.

| death_date = {{Death date and age|1874|03|04|1834|07}}

| death_place = New York City, New York, U.S.

| occupation = Actress, writer

| years_active = 1858–1874

}}

Ada Clare (pen names, Clare and Ada Clare; July 1834 – March 4, 1874) was an American actress and writer.Kenneth T. Jackson: The Encyclopedia of New York City: The New York Historical Society; Yale University Press; 1995. P. 238.

Life and career

Ada Agnes Jane McElhenney was born in Charleston, South Carolina in 1834. She grew up under the care of her maternal grandfather as part of an aristocratic Southern family, but started her career as a writer around age 18, writing under the pseudonyms Clare and later Ada Clare.{{Cite book|title=Dictionary of Pseudonyms|author=Adrian Room|page=505|quote=Ada Clare:Jane McElheney... also wrote as Clare and Alastor, and acted as Agnes Stanfield. ..original surname ... given as McEhenney, McElHenney, McElehnny, McElhinney, McEthenery, and McEthenney... called herself Ada McElhenny.}}

She moved to New York City in 1854, took up acting, engaged in a widely publicized liaison with pianist and composer Louis Moreau Gottschalk, and bore a son out of wedlock. During the height of her acting career, she frequented Pfaff's Cellar, where she became known as the "Queen of Bohemia". She also wrote for the Saturday Press, an iconoclastic weekly magazine of the arts. Her only novel, entitled Only a Woman's Heart, was poorly received by reviewers, who criticized the author for her lack of skill with plot and dialogue.{{cite book|last1=Goldblatt|first1=Gloria Rudman|title=Ada Clare, Queen of Bohemia: Her Life and Times|date=2015|page=106|url=http://digital.lib.lehigh.edu/cdm4/nysp_viewer2.php?col=clare}} Clare was devastated, and returned to acting in a provincial stock company. On September 9, 1868, Clare married actor Frank Noyes in Houston, Texas.{{cite book|last1=Goldblatt|first1=Gloria Rudman|title=Ada Clare, Queen of Bohemia: Her Life and Times|date=2015|page=115|url=http://digital.lib.lehigh.edu/cdm4/nysp_viewer2.php?col=clare}}

Clare suffered a dog bite in her theatrical agent's office and died from rabies in 1874.

References

External links

[https://archive.org/stream/nationalmagazine22brayrich#page/637/mode/1up Ada Clare, Queen of Bohemia], by Charles Warren Stoddard, National Magazine, September 1905
[https://books.google.com/books?id=agYuAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA48 Obituary], Brief Chronicles, William Winter
[https://web.archive.org/web/20081203172128/http://californialegacy.org/radio_anthology/scripts/clare.html 2 short radio segments of Clare's writing from California Legacy Project Radio Anthology (scripts and audio)]
[http://hdl.handle.net/2027/njp.32101072962564?urlappend=%3Bseq=7 Only a Woman's Heart], by Ada Clare. New York: M. Doolady, 1866.