MARY MCCARTHY was born in Seattle on June 21, 1912. When her parents died in 1918 she was deposited with relations, as memorialized in Memories of a Catholic Girlhood, into ''circumstances of almost Dickensian cruelty and squalor." She later lived with Philip Rahv, whose Partisan Review she joined in 1937, and married eminent critic Edmund Wilson in 1938, the second of four marriages. Her scandalous, 1963 novel The Group spent two years on the New York Times bestseller list. Appalled by the book, Vassar College tried to revoke her degree. She died October 25, 1989 at New York Hospital.

VIVIAN GORNICK is the author of  many books, including The End of the Novel of Love, a National Book Critic's Circle Award finalist, Fierce Attachments: A Memoir, and The Men in My Life. She teaches writing at The New School.


From the Trade Paperback edition.