McCarthy, Mary

McCarthy, Mary (Therese)

(1912–89) woman of letters; born in Seattle, Wash. A Vassar graduate, she began her career as a reviewer for the Nation, New Republic, and Partisan Review, and in the course of a career embracing journalism, fiction, and autobiography, she became America's preeminent woman of letters. McCarthy chronicled decades of American intellectual life in satirical fiction, engaged other writers in public feuds, and repeatedly took contentious literary and political stands in print. The second of her four husbands was Edmund Wilson (married 1938–46).

The Cambridge Dictionary of American Biography, by John S. Bowman. Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995. Reproduced with permission.