Mary Mccarthy

Mary McCarthy (1912-1989) was born in Seattle, Washington. In New York, in the early 1930s, she was part of communist circles, but by the end of that decade she repudiated Soviet communism, expressing her solidarity with Trotsky after the Moscow Trials and vigorously criticizing playwrights and writers whom she considered favorable to Stalinism. She wrote for the most important American magazines and newspapers, advocating creative freedom in the face of doctrine and criticizing both McCarthyism and communism. She was a committed opponent of the Vietnam War. Her first novel, The Company She Keeps, was published in 1942. She was also the author of Memoirs of a Catholic, Girlwood, The Stones of Florence, Venice Observed, and Birds of America, among other titles.