born June 21, 1912, Seattle, Wash., U.S.
died Oct. 25, 1989, New York, N.Y.
U.S. novelist and critic.
She served on the editorial staff of the Partisan Review from 1937 to 1948. She began writing fiction at the urging of her second husband, Edmund Wilson . Her work is noted for bitingly satiric commentaries on marriage, the impotence of intellectuals, and the role of women in contemporary urban America. Her novels include The Company She Keeps (1942); The Group (1963), her most popular work; Birds of America (1971); and Cannibals and Missionaries (1979). She also wrote two autobiographies, Memories of a Catholic Girlhood (1957) and How I Grew (1987).