author
Thomas Woody
1891–1960
Best known for a landmark two-volume history of women’s education in the United States, this American historian of education wrote with the patience of a researcher and the sweep of a storyteller. His work ranged from early Quaker schooling to international education and social conditions abroad.
1 Audiobook
Early Quaker education in Pennsylvania
by Thomas Woody
About the author
Born in 1891 and active as a scholar of educational history, Thomas Woody is best remembered for A History of Women's Education in the United States, a major two-volume study first published in 1929. The scale of that project helped give him a lasting place in the field, and later scholars continued to treat it as an important reference point.
His published work shows a wide curiosity about how schools develop across different places and traditions. Alongside his writing on women’s education, he also wrote on Quaker education and on schooling in Germany after the Reformation, suggesting a career shaped by both American educational history and broader comparative interests.
Archival records for the Thomas Woody papers describe manuscripts, correspondence, notes, and printed material connected not only to education in the United States, but also to the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia, Soviet-American cultural relations, and interwar social and political conditions. A Guggenheim Fellowship listing also points to the recognition he received as a scholar. He died in 1960.