The Groves of Academe

The Groves of Academe (1952) is a novel by American writer Mary McCarthy. Considered to be one of the first academic novels, it concerns the sequence of events that take place after Henry Mulcahy, a literary instructor at the fictive Jocelyn College, learns that his teaching appointment will not be renewed. The novel is intended as a satire of academics based on the author's teaching experiences at Bard and Sarah Lawrence Colleges. The book is prefaced by a quote from Horace's Epistles, Atque inter silvas academi quaerere verum, which translates from the Latin as "And Seek for Truth in the Garden of Academus." The book's first chapter, "An Unexpected Letter," originally appeared in the The New Yorker.