Mary McCarthy’s The Group Turns 60

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Join us as we discuss Mary McCarthy’s best-known work, The Group, published in 1963. An instant hit, it remained on the New York Times bestseller list for two years and follows eight friends over the course of seven years following their graduation from Vassar College in 1933. It was banned in Australia, Ireland, and Italy for its frank discussion of topics ranging from sex and contraception to lesbianism and mental illness.

Discussed in this episode:

Lost Ladies of Lit Patreon Wait List

Norman Mailer’s review of The Group

Trailer for Sidney Lumet’s film adaptation of The Group

Candace Bushnell’s Sex and the City

Lost Ladies of Lit episode No. 112 on Rona Jaffe’s The Best of Everything

Lost Ladies of Lit episode No. 142 on Miriam Karpilove’s Diary of a Lonely Girl

Lost Ladies of Lit episode No. 138 on Ursula Parrott’s Ex Wife

Lost Ladies of Lit episode No. 10 on A Falling Out Among Friends (Willa Cather’s feud with Dorothy Canfield Fisher)

Lost Ladies of Lit episode No. 159 on Verbal Faux Pas and Mondegreens

Vassar Daisy Chain

Mary McCarthy’s The Group