Snyder, Alice D. (1887–1943)

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Snyder, Alice D. (1887–1943)

American educator . Born Alice Dorothea Snyder on October 29, 1887, in Middletown, Connecticut; died of a heart attack on February 17, 1943, at her Vassar College campus apartment; daughter of Peter Miles Snyder (a minister) and Grace Evelyn (Bliss) Snyder (a pianist and mathematics teacher); sister of Franklyn Bliss Snyder (president of Northwestern University) and Edward Douglas Snyder (professor of English at Haverford College); graduated from high school in Rockford, Illinois, 1905; Vassar College, A.B., 1909, A.M., 1911; University of Michigan, Ph.D. in English and philosophy, 1915; never married; no children.

Born in 1887 in Middletown, Connecticut, Alice D. Snyder grew up in a highly educated family. Her mother Grace Bliss Snyder was an 1877 Vassar College graduate, pianist, and mathematics teacher. Her father Peter Miles Snyder graduated from Williams College in 1874 and traveled abroad before entering the seminary. Although ill health impeded much of Snyder's early schooling, the family house was filled with conversation and books, and her parents encouraged Alice and her two brothers to write parodies and poems.

The family relocated to Burlington, Vermont, and then Rockford, Illinois, where Snyder graduated from high school in 1905. Having selected her mother's alma mater, Snyder earned an A.B. from Vassar in 1909. Offered a fellowship in English, she remained at Vassar to complete her A.M. degree in 1911 while also acting as an assistant in English at Rockford College. With her master's degree in hand, she became an instructor in English at Vassar in 1912. In 1914, she became an assistant in rhetoric at the University of Michigan, where she received her doctorate in both English and philosophy a year later.

Snyder returned to Vassar's English department and developed a reputation as a caring and inspiring teacher. She contributed substantially to the scholarship on Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the basis of her doctoral dissertation, and revived critical interest in his nonfiction writings. Over the years, she authored several books on Coleridge and 17 articles, obtaining previously unpublished manuscript material from his great-grandson. Snyder also helped to develop educational policy at Vassar and served on the College Entrance Examination Board committee.

In addition to active participation in the Modern Language Association and the Modern Humanities Research Association, Snyder was an advocate of larger contemporary social issues, such as women's suffrage, the Better Housing League, the Teachers' Union, the American Labor Party, and the National Council for American-Soviet Friendship. In 1943, at age 55, Snyder died of a heart attack at her Vassar campus apartment. She was buried in Watertown, New York.