Clare, Ada (1836–1874)
Clare, Ada (1836–1874)
American author and actress. Name variations: (real name) Jane McElhenney; (stage name) Agnes Stanfield; (pseudonym) Alastor. Born Jane McElhenney, 1836, in Charleston, South Carolina; died Mar 4, 1874, in New York, NY; dau. of James (lawyer) and Joanna (Wilson) McElhenney (died 1847); m. J. Franklin Noyes (actor), Sept 9, 1868; children: (with Louis Moreau Gottschalk) Aubrey (b. 1857).
Made stage debut in amateur production of The Hunchback (1855); began publishing poems, sketches, and stories under pen names "Clare" (1855) and then "Ada Clare"; performed in plays in NY including Love and Revenge (1855), The Wife, Hamlet, The Marble Heart, Jane Eyre (1856), The Phantom (1856) and Anthony and Cleopatra (1859); wrote regular column for Saturday Press; became known as the "Queen of Bohemia" as a member of literary group which included Henry Clapp, Adah Isaacs Menken, and Walt Whitman (who idealized her as the "New Woman"); in San Francisco, CA, wrote for Golden Era and San Francisco Bulletin (1864); returned to NY (1864) then toured the South under stage name Agnes Stanfield.