Mary McCarthy (1912 – 1989)
American author and critic.
Mary McCarthy was a rara avis, a rare bird: a truly sexy intellectual who was nonetheless more interested in truth than in being intellectually sexy or fashionable. ... The real beauty of her life and work is that she was an explorer who never compromised her freedom or integrity. Her writing was symptomatic of this. It never quite became an end in itself, but remained, throughout her life, a means to articulating herself as "her own woman." In that she succeeded marvellously and it is the way in which she did it for which she deserves lasting respect and emulation.
The cultural heroine of my generation... before feminist writing got bogged down in victimisation.
You know what my favourite quotation is?…It’s from Chaucer... Criseyde says it, "I am myne owene woman, wel at ese."