This beautiful new edition features unpublished notes for the novel and other illuminating documentary material, all of which is included in a new Afterword by Tappan Wilder. On Friday noon, July the twentieth, 1714, the finest bridge in all Peru broke and precipitated five travelers into the gulf below. With this celebrated sentence Thornton Wilder begins The Bridge of San Luis Rey, one of the towering achievements in American fiction and a novel read throughout the world. By chance, a monk witnesses the tragedy. Brother Juniper then embarks on a quest to prove that it was divine intervention rather than chance that led to the deaths of those who perished in the tragedy. His search leads to his own death -- and to the author's timeless investigation into the nature of love and the meaning of the human condition. This new edition of Wilder's 1928 Pulitzer Prize winning novel contains a new foreword by Russell Banks.

The publication of volume two of this landmark collection celebrates the close of the centennial year of Thornton Wilder's birth. This volume collects 17 plays from the author's three-minute and five-minute plays for five actors series and includes the full-length play "The Alcestiad," a major work by the author of "Our Town" and "The Skin of Our Teeth" which has long been unavailable.

"Thornton Wilder: A Life brings readers face to face with the extraordinary man who made words come alive around the world, on the stage and on the page." —James Earl Jones, actor "Comprehensive and wisely fashioned….This book is a splendid and long needed work." —Edward Albee, playwright Thornton Wilder—three-time Pulitzer Prize winner, creator of such enduring stage works as Our Town and The Skin of Our Teeth, and beloved novels like Bridge of San Luis Ray and Theophilus North—was much more than a pivotal figure in twentieth century American theater and literature. He was a world-traveler, a student, a teacher, a soldier, an actor, a son, a brother, and a complex, intensely private man who kept his personal life a secret. In Thornton Wilder: A Life, author Penelope Niven pulls back the curtain to present a fascinating, three-dimensional portrait one of America's greatest playwrights, novelists, and literary icons.

The author of such classics as Our Town and The Bridge of San Luis Rey, Thornton Wilder was a born storyteller and dramatist—rare talents on glorious display in this volume of more than three hundred letters he penned to a vast array of famous friends and beloved relatives. Through Wilder's correspondence, readers can eavesdrop on his conversations with Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, Noël Coward, Gene Tunney, Laurence Olivier, Aaron Copland, Paul Hindemith, Leonard Bernstein, Edward Albee, and Mia Farrow. Equally absorbing are Wilder's intimate letters to his family. Wilder tells of roller-skating with Walt Disney, remembers an inaugural reception for FDR at the White House, describes his life as a soldier in two World Wars, and recalls dining out with Montgomery Clift and Elizabeth Taylor. In these pages, Thornton Wilder speaks for himself in his own unique, enduring voice—informing, encouraging, instructing, and entertaining with his characteristic wit, heart, and exuberance.

Thornton Wilder’s renowned 1967 National Book Award–winning novel features a foreword by John Updike and an afterword by Tappan Wilder, who draws on such unique sources as Wilder’s unpublished letters, handwritten annotations in the margins of the book, and other illuminating documentary material. In 1962 and 1963, Thornton Wilder spent twenty months in hibernation, away from family and friends, in the town of Douglas, Arizona. While there, he launched The Eighth Day, a tale set in a mining town in southern Illinois about two families blasted apart by the apparent murder of one father by the other. The miraculous escape of the accused killer, John Ashley, on the eve of his execution and his flight to freedom triggers a powerful story tracing the fate of his and the victim’s wife and children. At once a murder mystery and a philosophical story, The Eighth Day is a “suspenseful and deeply moving” (New York Times) work of classic stature that has been hailed as a great American epic.****

First published in 1930, Wilder's best-selling novel 'The Woman of Andros1 is set on a Greek island before the birth of Christ. 'The Ides of March', first published in 1948, is an epistolary novel set in the Rome of Julius Caesar.

A timeless statement about human foibles . . . and human endurance, this beautiful new edition features Wilder's unpublished production notes, diary entries, and other illuminating documentary material, all of which is included in a new Afterword by Tappan Wilder. Time magazine called The Skin of Our Teeth "a sort of Hellzapoppin' with brains," as it broke from established theatrical conventions and walked off with the 1943 Pulitzer Prize for Best Drama. Combining farce, burlesque, and satire (among other styles), Thornton Wilder departs from his studied use of nostalgia and sentiment in Our Town to have an Eternal Family narrowly escape one disaster after another, from ancient times to the present. Meet George and Maggie Antrobus (married only 5,000 years); their two children, Gladys and Henry (perfect in every way!); and their maid, Sabina (the ageless vamp) as they overcome ice, flood, and war -- by the skin of their teeth.

Marking the thirtieth anniversary of Theophilus North, this beautiful edition features Thornton Wilder's unpublished notes for the novel and other illuminating documentary material, all of which is included in a new Afterword by Tappan Wilder. The last of Wilder's works published during his lifetime, this novel is part autobiographical and part the imagined adventure of his twin brother who died at birth. Setting out to see the world in the summer of 1926, Theophilus North gets as far as Newport, Rhode Island, before his car breaks down. To support himself, Theophilus takes jobs in the elegant mansions along Ocean Drive, just as Wilder himself did in the same decade. Soon the young man finds himself playing the roles of tutor, spy, confidant, lover, friend, and enemy as he becomes entangled in the intrigues of both upstairs and downstairs in a glittering society dominated by leisure. Narrated by the elderly North from a distance of fifty years, Theophilus North is a fascinating commentary on youth and education from the vantage point of age, and deftly displays Wilder's trademark wit juxtaposed with his lively and timeless ruminations on what really matters about life, love, and work at the end of the day—even after a visit to Newport.

The classic Thornton Wilder novel that recreates the dazzling ancient Roman empire of Julius Caesar—now with a new introduction by Jeremy McCarter, author of Young Radicals and co-author (with Lin-Manuel Miranda) of the #1 New York Times bestseller Hamilton: The Revolution. First published in 1948, The Ides of March is a brilliant epistolary novel of the Rome of Julius Caesar. Through imaginary letters and documents, Wilder brings to life a dramatic period of world history and one of its magnetic personalities. In this novel, the Caesar of history becomes Caesar the human being as he appeared to his family, his legions, his Rome, and his empire in the months just before his death. In Wilder's inventive narrative, all Rome comes crowding through his pages: Romans of the...

Thornton Wilder, author of such landmark works for the stage as "Our Town" and "The Skin of Our Teeth" as well as the classic novel "The Bridges of San Luis Rey" is considered one of America's greatest man of letters. This two volume publication collects the complete short works for the stage, including a never-before-published one act play.

"If John Steinbeck's mighty Grapes of Wrath is the tragic novel of the Great Depression, then Heaven's My Destination is its comic masterpiece. —J.D. McClatchyA hilarious tale about goodness in a fallen world, Heaven's My Destination introduces George Marvin Brush, one of Thornton Wilder's most memorable characters. Brush, a traveling textbook salesman, is a fervent religious convert who is determined to lead a good life. With sad and sometimes hilarious consequences, his travels take him through smoking cars, bawdy houses, banks, and campgrounds from Texas to Illinois—and into the soul of Depression-era America itself. This special edition includes an updated afterword by Wilder's nephew, Tappan Wilder, with illuminating material about the author and book.

"For much of the twentieth century, these remarkable early novels were hidden in the great shadow of The Bridge of San Luis Rey. Now we can examine them in the spotlight for the gifts that they are—memorable monuments to style and keys to understanding Wilder's genius." – Penelope Niven, Thornton Wilder BiographerFeaturing a foreword by Penelope Niven and a revealing afterword by Wilder's nephew, Tappan, this reissue reintroduces the reader to the Thornton Wilder's first novel, The Cabala, and to The Woman of Andros, one of the inspirations for his Pulitzer Prize-winning play Our Town.A young American student spends a year in the exotic world of post-World War I Rome. While there, he experiences firsthand the waning days of a secret community (a "cabala") of decaying royalty, a great cardinal of the Roman Church, and an assortment of memorable American ex-pats. The Cabala, a semiautobiographical novel of unforgettable...

"Loud, slap dash and uproarious...extraordinarily original and funny."—New York TimesNow, for the first time in a standalone edition, Thornton Wilder's brilliant, hilarious play which was adapted into the hit Broadway musical Hello, Dolly with an afterword by Wilder's nephew, Tappan Wilder.Horace Vandergelder, a wealthy old merchant residing in Yonkers has decided it's time to take a wife and hires a matchmaker. But Dolly Gallagher Levi is no ordinary matchmaker. She's a force of nature, with a plan of her own. Levi soon becomes involved in the affairs of the hearts of all those around her—including Vandergelder's niece, his store clerks, assorted young and lovely ladies, and the headwaiter at an expensive restaurant, where this swift farce inevitably runs headlong into hilarious complications. Indeed, after a series of slapstick situations involving mistaken identities, a secret rendezvous behind carefully placed...

This beautiful new edition features an eyeopening Afterword written by Tappan Wilder that includes Thornton Wilder's unpublished notes and other illuminating photographs and documentary material.Our Town was first produced and published in 1938 to wide acclaim. This Pulitzer Prize-winning drama of life in the small village of Grover's Corners, an allegorical representation of all life, has become a classic. It is Thornton Wilder's most renowned and most frequently performed play.