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Come Clean, My Love

1949 novel by Rosemary Drachman Taylor

Manuscripts, fine bindings, an engraving plate and preserved performance ephemera
Arts and lettersInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionMay 18, 2026
Entity authorityQ112190006 ↗
Source-derived summary

Come Clean, My Love is a 1949 novel by Rosemary Drachman Taylor. Like her prior novels, the book began as a re-telling of factual events about her family's life in early 1900s Tucson. This time it was to focus on her brother Oliver and his inheriting their father's steam laundry, but due to complaints from her family about telling all their secrets, and the author's own feeling of constraint about having to follow real life, the novel turned into one of pure fiction. In May 1949 the book was selected to appear in condensed form in Woman's Home Companion. To celebrate the launch of the new book, a party was thrown at the steam laundry in Tucson, Arizona started by her father and run by her brother, which became the fictional setting for the novel. John Winchcombe-Taylor, Taylor's husband, adapted the book into a play, which premiered in Tucson at the Tucson Little Theater in October 1949.

Plot

When Wyatt Bruce's father suddenly cuts off his alimony payments, Wyatt is forced to look for work. His mother owns a half-interest in a local steam laundry, however the laundry is not doing well. Wyatt goes to work at the laundry in order to turn it into a success. With the help of his wealthy fiancé, Cordelia, he turns the business around, but also creates a love triangle between himself, Cordelia, and the daughter of the owner of the other half of the laundry, Janey.

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “Come Clean, My Love” as 1949 novel by Rosemary Drachman Taylor. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Come, Clean and Love.

Editorial reviewA productive route into publication, performance and collection histories when the underlying object or edition remains clearly identified. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1949—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with Come, Clean and Love providing the first useful test.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Come Clean, My Love”, the useful work is to connect “1949 novel by Rosemary Drachman Taylor” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.

Evidence profile

Attribution, date and provenance are strongest when supported by the original work, a catalogue record and documented transmission. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 18, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q112190006. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1949.

Critical limits

Later fame can flatten the distinction between original context, subsequent adaptation and institutional collecting history. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.

Best used for
  • Identifying works and editions
  • Tracing reception history
  • Finding collection records
Verify next

The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Come Clean, My Love”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Come Clean, My Love primary sources, Come Clean, My Love archive and Come research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Come Clean, My Love”?
  2. Which edition, object, performance or recording is being described?
  3. How did later circulation or interpretation alter the work’s reception?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Come Clean, My Love” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.