Hannah Adams receives borrowing privileges and access to the reading room at Boston Athenaeum.

Sometimes described as first full-time, professional woman author in the U.S., she becomes the first woman with full membership privileges at the Boston Athenaeum. Previously, women had been barred lest they “cause embarrassment to modest men.” But Adams is required to be locked inside the library during the staff’s lunch hour “in modesty.” Women are not routinely allowed in the library until 1856.