Mary Therese McCarthy (June 21st, 1912 – October 25th, 1989) was an American novelist, critic and political activist born in Seattle, Washington. McCarthy learned loss at an early age, losing both her parents to the flu epidemic of 1918, a situation that led to a childhood of harsh treatment and abuse raised by an uncle and aunt at her catholic father’s parents’ home in Minneapolis, Minnesota. McCarthy explored the complexities of this time in her memoir Memories of a Catholic Girlhood.
As a young adult, McCarthy left the Catholic Church to become an atheist and by the 1930s was moving in “Fellow travelling” communist circles, expressing solidarity with Leon Trotsky after the Moscow Trials and vigorously countering authors she considered to be sympathetic to Stalinism. Around this time McCarthy was a regular contributor to The Nation, The New Republic, Harper’s Magazine and the New York Review of Books.
During the 1940s and 50s Mary McCarthy become a liberal critic of both McCarthyism and Communism, maintaining this stance into the 1960s when she opposed the Vietnam War and covering the Watergate Scandal.
By now an established writer, McCarthy wrote many novels and nonfiction books and critiques, and has had almost as many books written about her. Below is an introduction to the author and her best known works. Watch as Kiernan, author Laura Furman, and McCarthy’s granddaughter Sophia Wilson discuss how McCarthy’s unique past led her to create such timeless classics.
One of the most celebrated writers of her time, McCarthy died at New York-Presbyterian Hospital from lung cancer on October 25th 1989.
Birmingham Poet, Benjamin Zephaniah dies, aged 65
Top Authors Join Legal Battle Against OpenAI for Mass Copyright Infringement
Literary Icon, Cormac McCarthy has died
The Literary World Mourns Martin Amis