Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk and The Startling Mysteries of a Convent Exposed by Maria Monk.
The Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk, as Exhibited in a Narrative of Her Sufferings During a Residence of Five Years as a Novice and Two Years as a Black Nun, in the Hotel Dieu Nunnery in Montreal was first published in January 1836. The book was written by a former nun who had escaped from the Hotel Dieu nunnery in Montreal. It promised to expose the iniquity of the Catholic convent system. The book was as sensational as it promised to be, and immediately became a rallying point for the nativist movement. According to the Protestant Vindicator, by the end of July, 1836 it had already sold over 26,000 copies. By the start of the American Civil War, it would have sold 300,000 copies. It was reprinted, under varying titles by various publishing houses, at least half a dozen times just in 1836, and continued to be reprinted well into the twentieth century.
Maria Monk's story, as she tells it, is a pathetic one. Though raised a Protestant, young Maria became interested in religious life through her experience as a student in a convent school. Upon completing her studies, she chose to become a nun, and elected to become a novice at the nearby Hotel Dieu. Once Maria had been admitted, the Superior wasted no time in dispelling her misapprehensions about the nature of conventual life. Maria Monk describes the convent as little more than a harem for the use of the local priesthood...
