Her poetry was in the style of light verse, specializing in humor, satiric tone and the positive aspects of suburban life.

McGinley enjoyed a wide readership in her lifetime, publishing her work in newspapers and women's magazines such as the Ladies Home Journal, as well as in literary periodicals, including The New Yorker, The Saturday Review and The Atlantic.

She also held nearly a dozen honorary degrees – "including one from the stronghold of strictly masculine pride, Dartmouth College" (from the dust jacket of Sixpence in Her Shoe (copy 1964)).

McGinley held an assortment of jobs there, including copywriter for an advertising agency, teacher at a junior high school in New Rochelle, and staff writer for Town and Country.

[2] Daughter Julie Hayden was the author of a favorably reviewed collection of short stories entitled The Lists of the Past.

Karloff's reading (warm and similar in feeling to his narration of the How the Grinch Stole Christmas television classic) was also one of his last performances—he died a few months later, in February 1969.

Spanning 1897 to 1978, the collection reflects not only the professional career of the American humorist and Pulitzer Prize-winning poet but also the wide scope of her audience.

Writings include, for any given title, any combination of work sheets, manuscripts, production records, and published versions of McGinley's books, essays, interviews, lyrics, poetry, reviews, scripts, speeches and stories.

McGinley's life with her husband, Charles Hayden, was, her daughter Patsy Blake stated, "a sanguine, benign, adorable version of 'Mad Men.'

" The couple entertained avidly: the regular guest list included Bennett Cerf, the drama critic Walter Kerr and leading advertising executives of the day.

Phyllis McGinley felt that the capability to foster familial relationships was what gave women their power, and she fought to defend their rights to do so.

Unlike classic fairy tales, there is a complete nonreliance on men to resolve the complications that arise, and the strong and powerful woman character (in classic conventions often evil or have possessed magical powers) is a completely independent human woman who uses intelligence to help the female protagonist achieve her goals.

[9] Auden praised her dexterous, unostentatious rhyming and found in her familial sensibility a likeness to Austen and Woolf, yet also a singular, accessible voice.

McGinley, in the book The Writer Observed, describes the difference between her so-called light verse and the poems with more weighty material.

"In times of unrest and fear, it is perhaps the writer's duty to celebrate, to single out some values we can cherish, to talk about some of the few warm things we know in a cold world.