MARY MCCARTHY I: 1942-63

In the first volume of the definitive edition of her fiction, four novels andeight classic stories by the witty and provocative writer who defined ageneration. Seventy-five years ago Mary McCarthy provoked a scandal with her electrifyingdebut novel, The Company She Keeps (1942), announcing the arrival of a majornew voice in American literature. A candid, thinly-veiled portrait of the late-1930sNew York intellectual scene, its penetrating gaze and creative fusion of life andliterature--"mutual plagiarism," she called it--became the hallmark of McCarthy'sfiction, which the Library of America now presents in full for the first time indeluxe collector's edition. The Oasis (1949), a wicked satire about a failed utopiancommunity, and The Groves of Academe (1952), a pioneering campus noveldepicting the insular and often absurd world of academia, burnished herreputation as an acerbic truth-teller, but it was with A Charmed Life (1955), asearing story of small-town infidelity, that McCarthy fully embraced the frank andavant-garde treatment of gender and sexuality that would inspire generations ofreaders and writers. Also included are all eight of McCarthy's short stories, fourfrom her collection Cast a Cold Eye (1950), and four collected here for the first time."