Class of 1922

Edwin Willoughby was born in Philadelphia on November 5, 1899, the eldest of the three children of printer Frank Faul Willoughby and his wife Annie. While Edwin was still a child, the family moved to New Jersey. In 1918, Willoughby entered Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania with the class of 1922, and participated in the Student Army Air Corps as a private during the First World War. He remained at Dickinson after the war, and was active in the Belles Lettres Literary Society, the New Jersey Club, and the YMCA. He also served as associate editor of the 1922 Microcosm. After receiving his B.A. from Dickinson in 1922, Willoughby earned his M.A. from the University of Chicago two years later while employed as a senior assistant at the Newberry Library of Chicago; ten years later in 1934 he earned his Ph.D. from there as well. He remained at the library until 1929 when he accepted a Guggenheim fellowship to study in London, England for two years.