Most Popular Books by Thornton Wilder

Our Town (SparkNotes Literature Guide) by Thornton Wilder Making the reading experience fun! Created by Harvard students for students everywhere, SparkNotes is a new breed of study guide: smarter, better, faster. Geared to what today''s students need to know, SparkNotes provide: *Chapter-by-chapter analysis *Explanations of key themes, motifs, and symbols *A review quiz and essay topics Lively and accessible, these guides are perfect for late-night studying and writing papers

This one-act comedy, set in a Pullman car on a train traveling from New York to Chicago in December, 1930, introduces techniques Wilder would use in future three-act plays. Pullman Car takes us on a metaphorical journey by train through the American landscape, a diverse band of travelers encapsulated in a Pullman car hurtle through time, space and a range of emotions.5 women, 12 men

Letters written between 1950 and 1975 by Thornton Wilder and Adaline Glasheen discussing their reading of Finnegan''s Wake.

"Each of the novels is a special achievement, different in its own fashion from any other novels written at the time, or since. The Woman of Andros is a Greek pastoral as beautifully handled as the figures on a Greek vase. It contrasts with The Bridge of San Luis Rey, which is a fable (perhaps more Buddhist than Christian in its feeling), as much as with The Cabala, which is an album of boldly depicted characters. All three novels, different as they are from one another, have something in common besides their economy of statement and their felicity of style. Perhaps it is the quality that was praised by Henry James in his little book on Hawthorne. There he said, speaking of The Scarlet Letter, ''It has about it that charm, very hard to express, which we find in an artist''s work the first time he has touched his highest mark--a sort of straightness and naturalness of execution, and unconsciousness of his public, and freshness of interest in his theme.'' These books have that quality too, and they ask to be reread."--From back cover.

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.

First produced and published in 1938, this Pulitzer Prize-winning drama of life in the small village of Grover’s Corners, an allegorical representation of all life, has become an American classic. It is Thornton Wilder’s most renowned and most frequently performed play.