Welcome
The Mary McCarthy Society is an organization for scholars, students, and followers of Mary McCarthy. The Society is a division of the American Literature Association, at which we sponsor a biennial conference panel, and an affiliate of the Vassar College Library Special Collections, which holds much of McCarthy’s archival writings, manuscripts, and correspondence.
As a public intellectual, essayist, novelist, and critic, Mary McCarthy addressed some of the most controversial issues of her time. She is the author of the notable autobiography, Memories of a Catholic Girlhood (1957), which charts her heretical relation to her strict Catholic upbringing and calls into question the relation of fact to fiction, and of the best-selling novel, The Group (1963), the story of eight Vassar graduates of the class of 1933, known for its frank and satiric treatment of taboo subjects of female sexuality and progressive ideals. McCarthy’s erudition and style is remembered in essays on Venice and Florence, the war in Vietnam and the Watergate hearings, first published in magazines such as Partisan Review, The New Yorker, Harper’s, and The New York Review of Books.
The Society’s website provides updates about new publications and events pertaining to Mary McCarthy, and offers a forum for the exchange of views relating to her legacy. These pages also function as both resource and tribute to the author’s life and work, aiming to inspire future generations of thinkers, artists, and contrarians.
Top Image: Mary McCarthy, Paris, 1964|© Bettmann/Getty Images
