Democracy: An American Novel

Democracy: An American Novel is a political novel written by Henry Brooks Adams and published anonymously in 1880. Only after the writer's death in 1918 did his publisher reveal Adams's authorship although, upon publication, the novel had immediately become popular. Contemporaneous conjecture placed the book under the joint authorship of Clarence King, John Hay and Henry Adams and their spouses who lived side by side on H street in Washington DC and were collectively sometimes called "the Five of Hearts." (Biography of John Hay Vol. II William Roscoe Thayer/Clara S. Hay Houghton Mifflin New York 1915)

In January 2005, the Washington National Opera premiered Democracy: An American Comedy, an opera by Scott Wheeler and Romulus Linney based upon Henry Adams' book.

Democracy is a novel about political power, its acquisition, use and abuse. It is set at the beginning of a new administration, with the election campaign just over and the new President of the United States just having been elected. However, all the characters depicted are entirely fictitious. The new president's Christian name is Jacob, while his full name is never revealed. In a 1961 foreword to the novel, Henry D. Aiken states that the U.S. president of the novel "bears some resemblance to Andrew Johnson, to Garfield, and to Grant". Dates are never mentioned either, but internal evidence (at one point a 25-year-old woman says that she was "almost an infant" during the Civil War) suggests it is set in the late 1870s.