Alumnae Quarterly, Summer 1976

Mary Woolley Biography

One of the alumnae with whom I've been corresponding about my work in progress tells me there is a "rumor" that the book I am writing is to be about Miss Marks as well as Miss Woolley. Since the book is under contract to Houghton Mifflin with the tentative title Miss Marks and Miss Woolley, it seems fair to confirm the rumor.

It also seems fair to explain what changed my mind. I had started the project with the intention of writing a book about Miss Woolley to take the place of Miss Marks's inadequate one. Many alumnae had questioned how I could write about Miss Woolley without including Miss Marks; the two had been intimate friends for 52 years. As I progressed with my research I discovered that their lives and careers were so intertwined that I could not possibly write about one without the other. The record of their friendship may well be unique in the annals of American feminism. I think I have also learned a great deal worth preserving about the education of women in the late nineteenth century, and the shifting views of society toward them from 1900 on.

I owe it to the College to say emphatically that this is not a sponsored biography. It was never intended to be such. I anticipate that the book will be published sometime early in 1977.

Anna Mary Wells '26
Piscataway, New Jersey

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