When Patty Went to College

Patty Wyatt is bright, quick with an excuse, and unwilling to work a minute harder than she judges necessary. Jean Webster’s first novel follows her senior year at an unnamed women’s college drawn from the author’s own time at Vassar, where she graduated in 1901. It arrives as loosely linked episodes rather than one continuous plot: settling a dormitory room with her roommate Priscilla, staging elaborate pranks, and matching wits with classmates and faculty. Underneath the mischief Patty has a real streak of decency. She quietly takes up the case of Olivia Copeland, a homesick freshman who has failed three subjects and expects to be sent home. Published in 1903, the book catches women’s college life while it was still a novelty, and it prepared the ground for Daddy-Long-Legs nine years later.