Withers, Carl.

Carl Loraine Withers was born on March 20, 1900, the youngest of five children. His parents, Sarah Virginia Adams Withers and Horace Smith Withers, settled in a small rural community near Sheldon, Missouri. During his formative years, Withers' family experienced economic hardship. Nevertheless, in 1918 they managed to raise sufficient funds for Withers to travel to Harvard University where he successfuly passed the entrance exam and received conditional acceptance as an English major. For unknown reasons, Withers withdrew from Harvard a year later and for a brief period worked as a field-hand in Ely, Nevada. In 1920 he returned to Harvard to complete his studies and graduated magna cum laude in 1922.

Following graduation, Carl Withers was associated with various academic institutions. In 1923 he taught English at Northwestern University followed by a brief teaching assignment at the College of William and Mary. In 1925 Withers was appointed director of the English Department at Deerfield Academy. He left the position after receiving a fellowship from the Scandinavian-American Foundation at the University of Copenhagen. Over the next two years he traveled and studied in Europe. When he returned to the U.S. in January 1927, he held two part-time teaching positions at New York University (Washington Square College) and the Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute in Brooklyn, New York.

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