Mary Therese McCarthy

Bio

(1912-1989) Writer, novelist. Mary McCarthy was born in Seattle, Washington. She graduated from Vassar, 1933. She lived in an apartment at 18 Gay Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York in 1936. She later lived on Beekman Place, and also stayed at the Hotel Chelsea. As drama critic for the Partisan Review (1937-45), she gained a reputation for wit, intellect, and acerbity, qualities she brings to her fiction. Her novel “The Oasis” (1949) satirizes left-wing intellectuals, whereas “The Group” (1963), while analyzing the lives of eight Vassar graduates, satirizes an entire generation. Her other fictional works include “Cast a Cold Eye” (1950), “The Groves of Academe” (1952), and “Birds of America” (1971). Among her non-fiction works are “Venice Observed” (1956), “The Stones of Florence” 1959), “Vietnam” (1967), and “The Mask of State: Watergate Portraits” (1974). She was married to Edmund Wilson for a period of time. She taught at Sarah Lawrence College in Yonkers, New York, in 1948.