Memories of a Catholic Girlhood
| Mary McCarthy | |
|---|---|
McCarthy in 1963
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| Born |
Mary Therese McCarthy June 21, 1912 Seattle, Washington, U.S. |
| Died | October 25, 1989 (aged 77) New York City, New York, U.S. |
| Cause of death | Lung cancer |
| Education | Vassar College |
| Spouse(s) | Harald Johnsrud (m. 1933) Edmund Wilson (m. 1938) Bowden Broadwater (m. 1946) James West (m. 1961) |
| Children | Reuel Wilson |
Mary Therese McCarthy (June 21, 1912 – October 25, 1989) was an American novelist, critic and political activist.
Born in Seattle, Washington, to Roy Winfield McCarthy and his wife, the former Martha Therese Preston, McCarthy was orphaned at the age of six when both her parents died in the flu epidemic of 1918. She and her brothers, Kevin, Preston, and Sheridan, were raised in very unhappy circumstances by her Catholic father's parents in Minneapolis, Minnesota, under the direct care of an uncle and aunt she remembered for harsh treatment and abuse.
When the situation became intolerable, she was taken in by her maternal grandparents in Seattle. Her maternal grandmother, Augusta Morganstern, was Jewish, and her maternal grandfather, Harold Preston, a prominent attorney and co-founder of the law firm Preston Gates & Ellis, was Presbyterian. (Her brothers were sent to boarding school.) McCarthy credited her grandfather, who helped draft one of the nation's first Workmen's Compensation Acts, with helping form her liberal views. McCarthy explores the complex events of her early life in Minneapolis and her coming of age in Seattle in her memoir, Memories of a Catholic Girlhood. Her younger brother, actor Kevin McCarthy, went on to star in such movies as Death of a Salesman (1951) and Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956).
Under the guardianship of the Prestons, McCarthy studied at the Forest Ridge School of the Sacred Heart in Seattle and Annie Wright Seminary in Tacoma, and went on to graduate from Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York, in 1933 with an A.B., cum laude, where she was elected to Phi Beta Kappa.
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