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Susan Wise Bauer

American historian

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
People and ideasInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 26, 2026
Entity authorityQ3505617
Source-derived summary

Susan Wise Bauer (born 1968) is an American author, English instructor of writing and American literature at The College of William and Mary, and founder of Well-Trained Mind Press (formerly Peace Hill Press).

Early life and education

Susan Wise Bauer was born on August 8, 1968, in Chelsea, Massachusetts. She grew up on a farm in Virginia, as the daughter of Jessie and James Wise. Her father was a pediatrician, and her mother was an educator. She and her two siblings received a homeschool education starting in the 1970s.

Bauer holds a Master of Divinity from Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, a Master of Arts in English and a Ph.D. in American Studies from The College of William and Mary. She received her B.A. from Liberty University. She has been a member of the English faculty at William and Mary since 1993. She married Peter John Bauer, a pastor, in 1990.

Career

Although she had written and published two novels in the 1990s, Bauer drew much wider attention in 1999 with the publication of The Well-Trained Mind: A Guide to Classical Education at Home, published by W. W. Norton, which was well reviewed and quickly became one of the primary sources for homeschooling families who wished to focus on classical education, sometimes also referred to as the Trivium or the Great Books movement.

Editorial summary

“Susan Wise Bauer” enters the record as american historian. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Susan, Wise and Bauer can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewStrongest as a route into the people, institutions and dated events that shaped the subject’s public record. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1968, 1993, 1990, 1999—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1968-01-01. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Susan, Wise and Bauer.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Susan Wise Bauer” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Susan, Wise and Bauer provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 26, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3505617. VIAF identifies the subject as 38643393. The Library of Congress control number is n96077227. 2 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1968, 1993, 1990 and 1999.

Critical limits

Public reputation and documentary evidence do not always develop together; absence from a summary is not evidence of historical absence. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
Verify next

Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Susan Wise Bauer”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Susan Wise Bauer primary sources, Susan Wise Bauer archive and Susan research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Susan Wise Bauer”?
  2. How has the subject’s reputation changed across later accounts?
  3. Which claims depend on a single source or contested interpretation?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Susan Wise Bauer” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.