McCarthy, Mary (1912-1989), was an American author. She wrote novels, short stories, criticism, essays, travel books, and autobiography. Much of her work is satirical and deals with events and issues of the day.
Mary Therese McCarthy was born on June 21, 1912, in Seattle. She described her childhood and early life in Memories of a Catholic Girlhood (1957) and How I Grew (1987). McCarthy graduated from Vassar College in 1933 and served as drama critic for the Partisan Review from 1937 to 1948. Her reviews and other criticism from 1937 to 1956 were collected in Sights and Spectacles (1956) and Theatre Chronicles (1963).
McCarthy’s fiction draws heavily on her own life. Her best-known novel, The Group (1963), follows the lives of several women who attended Vassar in the 1930’s. Her other novels include The Company She Keeps (1942), The Oasis (1949), The Groves of Academe (1952), A Charmed Life (1955), Birds of America (1971), and Cannibals and Missionaries (1979). Many of her short stories appear in Cast a Cold Eye (1950).
McCarthy wrote two travel books, Venice Observed (1956) and The Stones of Florence (1959). Her literary essays were collected in On the Contrary (1961), The Writing on the Wall (1970), and Ideas and the Novel (1980). McCarthy died on Oct. 25, 1989.
