Product Description
A hardcover UK Book Club edition , 1964, following from the 1963 first Edition, of the novel by Mary McCarthy - The Group.
Tanning to page block, and edgewear to the folds of the dustjacket, some small ghostmarks from tape internally on front endpaper, and on the inner reverse of the dustjacket.
Out of the groves of academe (Vassar College class of 31) into the big world comes the group, with their unassailable self-assurance: they had gone to the very best college (well, Vassar was better than Smith or Wellesley); they had some ennobling notions about being enlightened and interested in higher things; and they had had a very liberal education although in one area it proves to be a little patchy despite what the doctors at Vassar had told them)....
This is the book that aroused considerable advance speculation and well it might; it has a tremendous reader recognition and there cannot be much doubt that Mary McCarthy is an exceptional social satirist, with a jackdaw eye and an infallible ear. Through the sequence of events as one by one the girls go out to get a job, or a man, or keep him, the book not only achieves its continuity but its mobility of life through the '30's, social, political, professional and personal. From Kay's wedding in the church where her unreal will be held at the close of the book, this goes from one to the next—Dottie and her first experience, stripped to her string of pearls—the totem of good taste; Libby, who had done outstanding themes at Vassar, and now tries to make the literary scene in New York; Polly and her love for a young publisher who is married.