Couvent

240 p. 12mo. Original white printed wraps, stained and slightly torn. Picture of nun on front wrap. The most popular of all American anti-Catholic works. Maria Monk (1816-1839) was a Canadian woman who claimed to have been a nun who had been sexually exploited in her convent. She, or ghost writers who used her as their puppet, wrote a sensational book (first published in January 1836) about these allegations. The original book later grew into a large series of related books and tracts. Monk claimed that nuns of the Sisters of Charity of a Montreal convent of the Hotel-Dieu were forced to have sex with the priests in the seminary next door. The priests supposedly entered the convent through a secret tunnel. If the sexual union produced a baby, it was baptized and then strangled and dumped into a lime pit in the basement. Uncooperative nuns disappeared. This sensational and salacious tale fanned the flames of Nativist, Anti-Catholic, and Know-Nothing passions into the next century. It was extremely popular and widely circulated. This late paperback edition is quite scarce. POPERY BOX 1