The co-op bookstore for avid readers
Book Cover for: The Selected Letters of Thornton Wilder, Thornton Wilder

The Selected Letters of Thornton Wilder

Thornton Wilder

Spanning his entire life, The Selected Letters of Thornton Wilder is a comprehensive and fascinating collection of the great American writer's correspondence.

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.

Book Details

  • Publisher: Harper Perennial
  • Publish Date: Dec 1st, 2009
  • Pages: 768
  • Language: English
  • Edition: undefined - undefined
  • Dimensions: 7.90in - 5.20in - 1.30in - 1.35lb
  • EAN: 9780060765088
  • Categories: LettersLiterary FiguresAmerican - General

About the Author

Bryer, Jackson R.: -

Jackson R. Bryer is Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Maryland. He is the coeditor of Selected Letters of Eugene O'Neill and of Dear Scott, Dearest Zelda: The Love Letters of F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald.

Wilder, Robin Gibbs: -

Robin G. Wilder is an independent scholar with a Ph.D. in history who specializes in archival research. She is the niece by marriage of Thornton Wilder and knew him well.

Wilder, Thornton: -

Thornton Wilder (1897-1975) was an accomplished novelist and playwright whose works, exploring the connection between the commonplace and cosmic dimensions of human experience, continue to be read and produced around the world. The Bridge of San Luis Rey, one of his seven novels, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1928, as did two of his four full-length dramas, Our Town (1938) and The Skin of Our Teeth (1943). The Matchmaker was adapted as the musical Hello, Dolly! Wilder also enjoyed enormous success with many other forms of the written and spoken word, among them teaching, acting, opera, and film, including his classic screenplay for Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt (1943). The writer's many honors include the Gold Medal for Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and the National Book Committee's Medal for Literature.

More books by Thornton Wilder

Book Cover for: Our Town: A Play in Three Acts, Thornton Wilder
Book Cover for: The Bridge of San Luis Rey, Thornton Wilder
Book Cover for: The Ides of March, Thornton Wilder
Book Cover for: Our Town, Thornton Wilder
Book Cover for: The Skin of Our Teeth: A Play, Thornton Wilder
Book Cover for: Three Plays: Our Town, the Skin of Our Teeth, and the Matchmaker, Thornton Wilder
Book Cover for: The Matchmaker: A Farce in Four Acts, Thornton Wilder
Book Cover for: The Long Christmas Dinner, Thornton Wilder
Book Cover for: The Bridge of San Luis Rey: Large Print Edition, Thornton Wilder
Book Cover for: Theophilus North, Thornton Wilder
Book Cover for: The Skin of Our Teeth, Thornton Wilder
Book Cover for: The Eighth Day, Thornton Wilder
Book Cover for: Heaven's My Destination, Thornton Wilder
Book Cover for: The Cabala and the Woman of Andros: Two Novels, Thornton Wilder
Book Cover for: Our Town, Multilingual, Thornton Wilder
Book Cover for: American Characteristics and Other Essays, Thornton Wilder

Praise for this book

"[An] essential gathering of letters, carefully edited and abundantly annotated. . . . Like the best collections of correspondence in the hands of sensitive editors, this one peels away the quotidian to reveal the underlying personality of its subject." -- Publishers Weekly

"If you'd like to know how it feels to be a distinguished and popular author of both plays and novels for a good part of the 20th century, and to correspond with famous friends and a talented family, and to be a central figure in the events of one's time, then this is a good book to roll around in." -- A.R. Gurney, author of Love Letters

"Students and devotees of Wilder will find this a useful companion to his literary work." -- Library Journal

"A staggering range of acquaintance. . . . Wilder was a charmer. . . . His letters are chatty, intimate, appealingly self-deprecating." -- New Republic?

"Wilder's writing is sharply etched and generous of spirit. [In Selected Letters] he consistently discharges the obligation he imposed on his correspondents: that their letters 'intimate the alterations of climate in their hearts and minds.'" -- Times Literary Supplement (London)

"A book to treasure and to share. . . . A remarkable collection of letters covering more than 60 years of Thornton Wilder's life that become, in page after page, a blueprint of this brilliant, compassionate, truthful, loving man whose wit and superb command of language include the reader in a history of his friendships, of his family. What emerges from these pages is a new and sometimes surprising self-portrait of a great American artist." -- Marian Seldes