Early Life
Van Doren was born in Vermilion County, Illinois the fourth of five sons of the county's doctor, Charles Lucius Van Doren, of remote Dutch ancestry, and wife Eudora Ann Butz. He was raised on his family's farm in eastern Illinois, before his father decided to move to the neighboring town of Urbana, to be closer to good schools.
He was the younger brother of the academic and biographer Carl Van Doren, starting with whom all his five brothers attended the local elementary school and high school, and eventually studied at the University of Illinois also in the town.
Mark Van Doren earned a B.A. from the University of Illinois in 1914 and a Ph.D. from what became the Columbia Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at Columbia University in 1920.
Read more about this topic: Mark Van Doren
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