LAURA JOHNSON WYLIE
1855 - 1932
Bern, Milton, Pennsylvania, December 1, 1855
A.B., Vassar College, 1877
Ph.D., Yale, 
Instructor in English at Vassar, 1895-96
Associate Professor, 1896-97
Professor of English, 1897-l924
Professor Emeritus, l924
Died, Poughkeepsie, New York, April 2, 1932
An expression of what the life of Professor Wylie
has meant to us, her colleagues, may perhaps best
be approached by reminding ourselves of her own
definition of the task of college education as she
looked into the future on the day in June, l92h,
when she ceased from active service among us. The
continued existence of such a college as Vassar, she
said in her farewell speech, would be justified only
by its successful establishment as a vital part of
the life of the country; not as the educator of a
single class, isolated from the community, but as
the source, through those whom it directly trains,
of inlargement for every ccmmunity into which they
go.1
The largeness of such a conception, together with
the energy, the high spirit, and the thorough con-
sistency with which she lived up to it, was Profes-
sor Wylie's great contribution to her college and to
the cause of education, throughout her twenty-nine
years of teaching as a member of our faculty. And
in spite of her failing health in after years, the
Pdepth and fertility of her thinking power" (to use
the phrase of one of her colleagues? could still be
felt by all who knew her in college or town - felt
as a force for better living and more significant
social intercourse among all people. Personal free-
dom, social responsibility, creative activity - these
things she taught steadily wherever she was and how-
ever she lived. But first she followed them herself.
Miss Wylie came to the college as instructor in the
fall of 1895, as a seasoned teacher and with a doc-
tor's degree from Yale. She was expected to make
changes and she made them; within two years she was
LAURA JOHNSON WYLIE (Continued)
head of the department and had revolutionized the
work, organizing it on what must even today be
called a sound, flexible, and progressive plan for
the artistic and scholarly study of English, While
she showed in the selection of her assistants her
power to estimate character and ability, she was,
until 1901, almost single-handed in the work of re-
construction, the only person officially responsible
for the management of the department and the only
person in it above the rank of instructor. She car-
ried at the same time a heavy teaching schedule and,
however large her classes, succeeded in setting an
example of the principle she so firmly believed in,
of completely individualizing every student therein.
In the conduct both of her classes and of the de-
partment, her most remarkable achievement was - as
President MacCracken has elsewhere said - her power
to make almost any group of people, with varying or
even hostile opinions, work together for the common
good without compromising their integrity or her own.
She was always a tireless worker and a courageous
fighter for any principle she believed in, but never
at the expense of Justice or courtesy to an opponent.
Her colleagues paid tribute to her ability by electing
her to the most important committees and all movements
in the faculty towards a freer curriculum and greater
faculty participation in the management of the insti-
tution found in her an influential supporter, though
always with the proviso that proposed experiments
must be fully thought out and results inspected. The
students, too, trusted her and felt her personal
charm and the breadth of her sympathy to such an ex-
tent that few student enterprises of any moment were
begun without asking her advice or help.
In wholly inadequate recognition of these qualities,
the faculty hereby record their deep sorrow at the
death of their dear friend, Professor Emeritus Laura
Johnson Wylie, and their sense of loss at the passing
away of one who was always and most of all a great
teacher.
Rose Jeffries Peebles
Amy L. Reed
l. Katharine Warren, "The Retirement of Miss Wylie,"
Alumnae Quarterly, November l924,
IX - 98-99