Doris Grumbach

Doris M. Grumbach (née Isaac; July 12, 1918 – November 4, 2022) was an American novelist, memoirist, biographer, literary critic, and essayist.

She taught at the College of Saint Rose in Albany, New York, the Iowa Writers' Workshop, and American University in Washington, D.C., and was literary editor of The New Republic for several years.

She published many novels highlighting and focusing on gay and lesbian characters.

For two decades, she and her partner, Sybil Pike, operated a bookstore, Wayward Books, in Sargentville, Maine.

Doris M. Isaac was born in New York City as a fifth-generation Manhattanite, to Leonard William Isaac and Helen Oppenheimer.

When she was six, her younger sister Joan Elaine Isaac was born.

She grew up in Manhattan, where she attended elementary school PS 9.

A very bright student, she skipped many grades and entered high school at age eleven.

She was not prepared socially for this early advancement and did poorly, developing a stammer and losing her self-confidence.

She was encouraged by the principal to take a year off from high school.

When she returned, she was an indifferent student in the classroom, but showed talent in theater and in creative writing.

In her senior year, she won a citywide short story contest, which helped secure her admission to Washington Square College of New York University.

Isaac received her Bachelor of Arts degree from Washington Square College of New York University in 1939.

She majored in philosophy and graduated Phi Beta Kappa.

In 1940, she earned her Master of Arts degree in medieval literature from Cornell University.

There, she met her husband, Leonard Grumbach, who was studying for his doctorate in neurophysiology.

During 1940–1941, Grumbach worked for Loew's Inc./MGM writing subtitles for films distributed abroad.

They were married on October 5, 1941.

After the war, Grumbach moved around the country with her husband as he taught physiology.

During this period, the Grumbachs had four daughters: Barbara, Jane, Elizabeth, and Kathryn.

Before the birth of their fourth daughter, the Grumbachs settled in Albany, New York, where Leonard Grumbach taught at Albany Medical College and Doris Grumbach began a career in teaching.

During 1941–1942, she was employed as a proofreader for Mademoiselle magazine and then for the journal Architectural Forum in 1942–1943, eventually rising to the position of associate editor.

When her husband was drafted during World War II, Grumbach joined the U.S. Navy in 1943 as an officer in the WAVES and served from 1943 to 1945.

From 1957 to 1960, she taught senior English at the Albany Academy for Girls.

In 1960, she became a professor of English at the College of Saint Rose also in Albany, New York and taught there until 1971.

During her time at the college, Grumbach also began to focus on her writing career and published her first two novels, The Spoil of the Flowers (1962), and The Short Throat, The Tender Mouth (1964).

In 1967 she published a literary biography of novelist Mary McCarthy titled The Company She Kept, based in part on correspondence and other documents which McCarthy had shared with Grumbach.

Grumbach worked as a literary editor for The New Republic.

She wrote a column called "Fine Print".

In 1971, after raising their children, Grumbach left her husband.

She spent a year in Saratoga Springs, New York, helping to set up the external degree program at Empire State College.

Following her divorce, she began a relationship with Sybil Pike, who became and remained her life partner.

In 1972, accepting a position at The New Republic magazine as literary editor, Grumbach and Pike moved to Washington, D.C. Pike worked for the Library of Congress.

In 1990 Grumbach and Pike moved themselves and the bookstore to Sargentville, Maine.

There, Grumbach continued to write while Pike tended to the bookstore.

Grumbach published another fiction novel, The Book of Knowledge, in 1995, and several memoirs focusing mostly on aging.

In 2009 Wayward Books and their house in Maine were sold.

Around 2009, the couple moved to a Quaker retirement community in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, where Pike died in March 2021, aged 91.

Grumbach continued to write, contributing pieces of memoir and articles on old age to The American Scholar.

Grumbach celebrated her 100th birthday in 2018, and died in Kennett Square on November 4, 2022, at the age of 104.