New Releases by Thornton Wilder

The Bridge of San Luis Rey is set in 18th-century Peru and begins with the collapse of an ancient Inca bridge, sending five people to their deaths. The novel follows Brother Juniper, a Franciscan friar who witnesses the tragedy and embarks on a quest to understand the lives of the victims, hoping to prove God''s divine plan through their stories. The narrative explores the lives of the five individuals, including a noblewoman longing for her daughter''s love, twin brothers grappling with loss, and an aging actress trying to reclaim her former glory. Through this exploration, Wilder delves into themes of fate, love, and the human condition, ultimately questioning the nature of destiny and the search for meaning in life. The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder earned the Pulitzer Prize in 1928 and became the best-selling work of fiction that year. The novel explores profound themes of fate, divine providence, and the search for meaning in human lives, raising the question of whether there is a larger direction beyond individual will. Its enduring relevance led to its inclusion in Time magazine''s list of the 100 Best English-language Novels, cementing its place in literary history. This case laminate collector''s edition includes a Victorian-inspired dust jacket.

“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. McClatchy A 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.

“An extremely entertaining array of American life in a bygone era.” — New Yorker The last of Thornton Wilder’s works published during his lifetime, Theophilus North is part autobiographical and part the imagined adventures of Wilder’s twin brother who died at birth. This edition features an updated afterword from Wilder’s nephew, Tappan Wilder, with illuminating material about the novelist, story and setting. 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, tennis coach, spy, confidant, lover, friend and enemy as he becomes entangled in adventure and intrigue in Newport’s fabulous addresses, as well as in its local boarding houses, restaurants, dives and military barracks. 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, at the end of the day, about life, love, and work.

This play is thought to represent middle-age, in Wilder''s unfinished cycle of The Ages of Man. On a point of land jutting into a lake in southern Wisconsin, the Carter family enjoys a summer''s eve. It''s an evening like many others: Nothing happens and everything happens. Each member of the family - sixteen year-old Tom, his seventeen-year-old sister Francesca and their parents, Mr. and Mrs. Carter - shares different memories somehow connected with their surroundings. These memories color the mo

The Drunken Sisters is Wilder''s satyr play that followed The Alcestiad his adaptation of the ancient Greek "Alcestis" story. Apollo ventures into the land of the three sisters of Fate who control the threads of each man''s life and here in disguise he tricks the sisters into releasing their death hold on King Admetus. His trick: 3 flagons of wine which he declares to be Aphrodite''s beauty drink but which make the sisters drunk. He then foils them with a riddle releasing the king

"The best thing he ever wrote," observed Edmund Wilson of Thornton Wilder''s National Book Award winner The Eighth Day (1967), an enthralling novel that shows Wilder revisiting the small-town America of Our Town to fashion a philosophical whodunit. A wrongful conviction for murder and a daring rescue lead to a meditation on justice, destiny, and "the impassioned will," for which "nothing is impossible." Wilder''s last novel, the semi-autobiographical Theophilus North (1973), is an affectionate portrait of Newport, Rhode Island, in the 1920s and a playful, valedictory glance at Wilder''s young manhood. Completing this volume are three never-before- published reminiscences taken from an unfinished autobiography in which Wilder engagingly recalls his childhood stay at a boarding school in China, his time as an undergraduate at Yale, and the uneasy experience of visiting Salzburg not long before Austria was annexed by the Nazis. LIBRARY OF AMERICA is an independent nonprofit cultural organization founded in 1979 to preserve our nation’s literary heritage by publishing, and keeping permanently in print, America’s best and most significant writing. The Library of America series includes more than 300 volumes to date, authoritative editions that average 1,000 pages in length, feature cloth covers, sewn bindings, and ribbon markers, and are printed on premium acid-free paper that will last for centuries.

Ad in PMLA (Modern Language Association’s journal) Included in Wilder brochure to include this

Our town -- The skin of our teeth -- The matchmaker -- The Alcestiad -- The drunken sisters -- The marriage we deplore -- The unerring instinct -- Scenes from The emporium -- Plays for Bleecker Street -- The seven ages of man -- Writings on theater.

Our Town was first produced and published in 1938 to wide acclaim. This Pulitzer Prize–winning drama of life in the town 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. It is now reissued in this handsome hardcover edition, featuring a new Foreword by Donald Margulies, who writes, "You are holding in your hands a great American play. Possibly the great American play." In addition, Tappan Wilder has written an eye-opening new Afterword, which includes Thornton Wilder''s unpublished notes and other illuminating photographs and documentary material.

Drawing on such unique sources as Thornton Wilder''s unpublished letters, journals, and selections from the extensive annotations Wilder made years later in the margins of the book, Tappan Wilder''s Afterword adds a special dimension to the reissue of this internationally acclaimed novel. The Ides of March, first published in 1948, is a brilliant epistolary novel set in Julius Caesar''s Rome. Thornton Wilder called it "a fantasia on certain events and persons of the last days of the Roman republic." Through vividly imagined letters and documents, Wilder brings to life a dramatic period of world history and one of history''s most magnetic, elusive personalities. In this inventive narrative, the Caesar of history becomes Caesar the human being. Wilder also resurrects the controversial figures surrounding Caesar -- Cleopatra, Catullus, Cicero, and others. All Rome comes crowding through these pages -- the Rome of villas and slums, beautiful women and brawling youths, spies and assassins.

Letters trace the friendship between Stein and Wilder from late 1934 until Stein''s death in 1946

The Alcestiad by Thornton Wilder tells the story of Admetus, King of Thessaly (rich in horses), his wife Alcestis, and the triumphs and tragedies they endure as favorites of the god Apollo. Every major event in their marriage is a direct result of the interference of Apollo, though this is not made clear in The Alcestiad. Rather, the extent of Apollo’s involvement is made clear in the accompanying satyr play, The Drunken Sisters. --readingandruminations.wordpress.com.

"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."--Amazon

Over the years the family of the escaped murderer finds itself drawn inexorably closer to the victim''s family.

Thornton Wilder Comedy Characters: 2 male, 3 female In this provocative, sometimes chilling comedy, Wilder renders a child''s-eye view of the grown-up world, as a father, a mother and their three children play a revealing game of make-believe in which the children pretend to be orphans. Startling truths emerge on both sides, as pretense challenges the family to discard the traditional roles of parent, spouse, child, and sibling--blurring the lines between perception and rea

Describes life in ancient Greece shortly before the beginning of the Christian era.

In his Foreword to The Angel That Troubled the Waters and Other Plays, published in 1928, Wilder explained that almost all the playlets in the book are religious, "but religious in that dilute fashion that is a believer''s concession to a contemporary standard of good manners." He wanted to explore religious themes and questions without being preachy, or didactic ... In fact, it was often his intention in such playlets as this one to stand the biblical story on its head -to shake up the language, as it were. He also said--about his plays dealing with religious themes and stories--that in "these matters beyond logic, beauty is the only persuasion."--Www.throntonwilder.com.