Dorothy and Professor Wilder

Abstract Dorothy Ulrich was Thornton Wilder’s student at the University of Chicago in 1934. Subsequently, they became lifelong friends, as evidenced in the letters Wilder wrote her, which often answered questions about his work while Ulrich was writing her master’s thesis about it and also commented on her poetry or magazine and newspaper articles, which she sent him. She also became friends with Wilder’s sister Isabel. Ulrich’s 1938 essay about Wilder as a teacher and about Our Town, which originally appeared in The University of Chicago Magazine, is reprinted here.