This first volume of the definitive edition of her fiction includes
four novels and eight classic stories by the witty and provocative
writer who defined a generation
In 1942, Mary McCarthy provoked a scandal with her electrifying debut
novel, The Company She Keeps, announcing the arrival of a major new
voice in American literature. A candid, thinly-veiled portrait of the
late-1930s New York intellectual scene, its penetrating gaze and
creative fusion of life and literature--"mutual plagiarism," she called
it--became the hallmark of McCarthy's fiction, which the Library of
America now presents in full for the first time in deluxe collector's
edition. The Oasis (1949), a wicked satire about a failed utopian
community, and The Groves of Academe (1952), a pioneering campus novel
depicting the insular and often absurd world of academia, burnished her
reputation as an acerbic truth-teller, but it was with A Charmed Life
(1955), a searing story of small-town infidelity, that McCarthy fully
embraced the frank and avant-garde treatment of gender and sexuality
that would inspire generations of readers and writers. Also included are
all eight of McCarthy's short stories, four from her collection Cast a
Cold Eye (1950), and four collected here for the first time.
LIBRARY OF AMERICA is an independent nonprofit cultural organization
founded in 1979 to preserve our nation's literary heritage by
publishing, and keeping permanently in print, America's best and most
significant writing. The Library of America series includes more than
300 volumes to date, authoritative editions that average 1,000 pages in
length, feature cloth covers, sewn bindings, and ribbon markers, and are
printed on premium acid-free paper that will last for centuries.
