Books by Thornton Wilder
The Bridge of San Luis Rey (Perennial Classics)
This beautiful new edition features unpublished notes for the novel and other illuminating documentary material, all of which is included in a new Afterword by Tappan Wilder.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.
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The Bridge of San Luis Rey (Perennial Classics)
“The essence of Mr. Wilder’s book is really the feeling in it; it is a ‘notation of the heart’ with sympathy. Gaily or sadly, but always with understanding, a belief in the miracle of love runs through it all.” —Times Literary Supplement (London)
"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, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, one of the towering achievements in American fiction, and a novel beloved 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 Wilder’s timeless investigation into the nature of love and the meaning of the human condition.
This edition includes a foreword by acclaimed author Russell Banks and features previously unpublished notes and other illuminating documentary material about the novel and author.
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No copies available.
Theophilus North: A Novel
Marking the thirtieth anniversary of Theophilus North, this beautiful edition features Thornton Wilder's unpublished notes for the novel and other illuminating documentary material, all of which is included in a new Afterword by Tappan Wilder.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.
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The Skin of Our Teeth: A Play (Perennial Classics)
A timeless statement about human foibles...and human endurance, The Skin of Our Teeth is Thornton Wilder’s brilliant, Pulitzer Prize-winning play, with an afterword by Wilder’s nephew, 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.
Witty, clever, and provocative, The Skin of Our Teeth showcases Wilder’s storytelling genius and his extraordinary talents at delving deep into the human psyche.
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The Eighth Day: A Novel (Harper Perennial Modern Classics)
“[Wilder's] finest and most beautiful novel. . . . Spanning two continents and several generations, it begins as a murder mystery and goes on to tell a story, at once dramatic and philosophical, about the range of human courage, aspirations, steadfastness, weakness, defeat and victory.” — New York Post
This beautiful edition of Thornton Wilder’s renowned National Book Award–winning novel features a foreword by John Updike and an afterword by Tappan Wilder, who draws on unique sources as Wilder’s unpublished letters, handwritten annotations, and other illuminating documentary material.
At once a murder mystery and a philosophical tale, 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.
Set in a mining town in southern Illinois, the novels centers around two families blasted apart when the patriarch of one family, John Ashley, is accused of murdering his best friend. Ashley's miraculous jailbreak on the eve of his execution and his subsequent flight to South America trigger a powerful story tracing the fates of all those whose lives are forever changed by the tragedy: Ashley himself, his wife and children, and the wife and children of the victim.
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Three Plays: Our Town, The Skin of Our Teeth, and The Matchmaker (Perennial Classics)
From celebrated Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Thornton Wilder, three of the greatest plays in American literature together in one volume.
This omnibus edition brings together Wilder’s three best-known plays: Our Town, The Skin of Our Teeth, and The Matchmaker. Includes a preface by the author, as well as a foreword by playwright John Guare.
Our Town, Wilder's timeless Pulitzer Prize-winning look at love, death, and destiny, opened on Broadway in 1938 and continues to be celebrated and performed around the world.
The Skin of our Teeth, Wilder's 1942 romp about human follies and human endurance starring the Antrobus family of Excelsior, New Jersey, earned Wilder his third Pulitzer Prize.
The Matchmaker, Wilder's brilliant 1954 farce about money and love starring that irrepressible busybody Dolly Gallagher Levi. This play inspired the Broadway musical Hello, Dolly!
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Our Town: A Play in Three Acts
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.
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Our Town: A Play in Three Acts
“[Our Town] leaves us with a sense of blessing, and the unspoken but palpable command to achieve gratitude in what remains of our days on earth.” — The New Yorker
Thornton Wilder’s Pulitzer Prize-winning drama of life in the mythical village of Grover’s Corners, New Hampshire—an allegorical representation of all life—is an American classic. It is the simple story of a love affair that asks timeless questions about the meaning of love, life, and death.
Our Town explores the relationship between two young neighbors, George Gibbs and Emily Webb, whose childhood friendship blossoms into romance, and then culminates in marriage. When Emily loses her life during childbirth, the circle of life portrayed in each of the three acts—childhood, adulthood, and death—is fully realized.
Widely considered one of the greatest American plays of all time, Our Town debuted on Broadway in 1938 and continues to be performed daily on stages around the world. This special edition includes an afterword by Wilder's nephew, Tappan Wilder, with illuminating documentary material about the playwright and his most famous drama.
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$16.99
Our Town: A Play in Three Acts
“[Our Town] leaves us with a sense of blessing, and the unspoken but palpable command to achieve gratitude in what remains of our days on earth.” — The New Yorker
Thornton Wilder’s Pulitzer Prize-winning drama of life in the mythical village of Grover’s Corners, New Hampshire—an allegorical representation of all life—is an American classic. It is the simple story of a love affair that asks timeless questions about the meaning of love, life, and death. This beautiful hardcover edition features an illuminating afterword by Tappan Wilder, Thornton Wilder's nephew, and is the perfect gift for fans of this beloved tale.
Our Town explores the relationship between two young neighbors, George Gibbs and Emily Webb, whose childhood friendship blossoms into romance, and then culminates in marriage. When Emily loses her life during childbirth, the circle of life portrayed in each of the three acts—childhood, adulthood, and death—is fully realized.
Widely considered one of the greatest American plays of all time, Our Town debuted on Broadway in 1938 and continues to be performed daily on stages around the world.
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The Cabala; Bridge of San Luis Rey; Woman of Andros (Collected Stories of the World's Greatest Writers)
One choice can destroy you. Veronica Roth's second #1 New York Times bestseller continues the dystopian thrill ride that began in Divergent.
A hit with both teen and adult readers, Insurgent is the action-packed, emotional adventure that inspired the major motion picture starring Shailene Woodley, Theo James, Ansel Elgort, and Octavia Spencer.
As war surges in the factions of dystopian Chicago all around her, Tris attempts to save those she loves—and herself—while grappling with haunting questions of grief and forgiveness, identity and loyalty, politics and love.
And don't miss The Fates Divide, Veronica Roth's powerful sequel to the bestselling Carve the Mark!
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Heaven's My Destination
“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.
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Our Town and the Cosmic One-Acts: The Long Christmas Dinner, The Happy Journey to Trenton and Camden, and Pullman Car Hiawatha (Harper Perennial Deluxe Editions)
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Thornton Wilder: Collected Plays & Writings on Theater (LOA #172) (Library of America Thornton Wilder Edition)
Collected Plays and Writings on Theater, the most comprehensive one-volume edition of Thornton Wilder’s work for the stage ever published, takes the measure of his extraordinary career as a dramatist by presenting the complete span of his achievement, beginning with his early expressionist experiments and daring one-act plays, such as “The Long Christmas Dinner” and “The Happy Journey to Trenton and Camden” (one of Wilder’s personal favorites), ranging through the full flowering of Our Town, The Skin of Our Teeth, and The Matchmaker, and encompassing the intriguing dramatic projects of his later years, such as his adaptation of the ancient story of Alcestis (The Alcestiad) and plays written for dramatic cycles based on the Seven Deadly Sins and the varied ages of an individual’s life. Complementing the selection of plays is an illuminating group of essays that captures Wilder’s reflections on his plays and contains a revealing epistolary account of the film adaptation of Our Town.
This volume also includes material never before published: scenes from The Emporium, an ambitious unfinished play that, emerging out of Wilder’s intense engagement with existentialist philosophy in the postwar years, imagines a Kafkaesque department store whose enigmatic activities are as inscrutable as the mysteries of life itself; and the complete screenplay Wilder wrote for Alfred Hitchcock’s film Shadow of a Doubt just before reporting for military service in 1942. Although faithful to the spirit of the film, the screenplay presented here restores Wilder’s original dialogue, some of which (to Wilder’s dismay) was altered for the movie. A study of family life, youthful illusions, and the desperation of a criminal on the run, the Shadow of a Doubt screenplay is a masterful exhibition of the art of suspense and taut dramatic storytelling, and is an essential part of Wilder’s oeuvre.
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.
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The Bridge of San Luis Rey (Warbler Classics Annotated Edition)
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize
Listed Among Time Magazine’s 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005
In eighteenth-century Peru, the collapse of a fabled bridge sets in motion a profound exploration of fate, love, and the interconnectedness of human lives. The Bridge of San Luis Rey centers around Brother Juniper, a devout Franciscan monk who witnesses the accident and becomes obsessed with understanding the workings of divine providence. Motivated by his belief that the bridge’s collapse was not a random event, he embarks on a quest to investigate the lives of the five victims who perished in the tragedy. Through meticulous research and interviews, Brother Juniper uncovers the fascinating and often intertwined backstories of the victims: the Doña Maria, the Marquesa de Montemayor; her companion Pepita, a young orphan; Esteban, a scribe involved in a complicated love story; Uncle Pio, the devoted valet of actress Camila Perichole; and Jaime, her son.
With elegant prose and keen insight, Wilder poses profound questions about the nature of existence, the role of chance, and whether an elusive hand of destiny shapes our lives.
This Warbler Classics edition includes a detailed biographical timeline.
Thornton Wilder (1897–1975) was an acclaimed American playwright and novelist known for his profound exploration of human existence and the intricate interplay of time, memory, and individual experiences. Born in Madison, Wisconsin, Wilder studied at Yale and Princeton. He received three Pulitzer Prizes and numerous other awards for his novels and plays. Wilder’s unique ability to capture the beauty and complexity of ordinary lives earned him a revered place in American literature and his contributions continue to inspire generations of readers and theatergoers alike.
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IDES MAR
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 slums, of the villas, of the palaces, brawling youths and noble ladies and prostitutes, and the spies and assassins stalking Caesar in his Rome.
Vivid, compelling, and engaging, The Ides of March showcases Thornton Wilder’s unique storytelling genius. This special edition also includes an afterword by Wilder's nephew, Tappan Wilder, with illuminating documentary material about the novelist and story.
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The Skin of Our Teeth: A Play
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize
"Wilder has become a prophet again, searching for values that make humanity worth saving, in a world constantly on the verge of being destroyed either by pitiless nature or by human rage, selfishness, and folly." —Michael Feingold, Village Voice
A timeless statement about human foibles and human endurance, The Skin of Our Teeth brilliantlyshowcases Thornton Wilder’s storytelling genius and extraordinary talent for delving deep into the human psyche. This edition includes an updated afterword by Wilder's nephew, Tappan Wilder, with illuminating material about the author and play.
Written by Wilder less than a month after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, The Skin of Our Teeth broke from established theatrical conventions of nostalgia and sentiment and walked off with the 1943 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Combining farce, burlesque, satire, and more, Wilder depicts an ordinary family as it narrowly escapes one end-of-the-world disaster after another. 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.
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The Cabala and The Woman of Andros Two Novels
Featuring an illuminating new foreword by Penelope Niven and a revealing afterword by Tappan Wilder, this reissue of two early books by Thornton Wilder reintroduces the reader to the author'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 characters and human passions, launched Wilder's career as a celebrated storyteller and dramatist.
The Woman of Andros, Wilder's best-selling novel, published in 1930, is set on the obscure Greek island of Brynos before the birth of Christ, and explores Everyman questions of what is precious about life and how we live, love, and die. Eight years later, Wilder would pose the same questions on the stage in a play titled Our Town, also set in an obscure location, this time a village in New Hampshire. The Woman of Andros is celebrated for some of the most beautiful writing in American literature.
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Our Town: A Play in Three Acts (Harper Perennial Deluxe Editions)
“[Our Town] leaves us with a sense of blessing, and the unspoken but palpable command to achieve gratitude in what remains of our days on earth.”— New Yorker
Thornton Wilder’s Pulitzer Prize-winning drama of life in the mythical village of Grover’s Corners, New Hampshire—an allegorical representation of all life—is an American classic. It is the simple story of a love affair that asks timeless questions about the meaning of love, life, and death. This beautifully designed Harper Perennial Deluxe Edition features French flaps and deckle-edged paper, making it the perfect gift book.
Our Town explores the relationship between two young neighbors, George Gibbs and Emily Webb, whose childhood friendship blossoms into romance, and then culminates in marriage. When Emily loses her life in childbirth, the circle of life portrayed in each of the three acts—childhood, adulthood, and death—is fully realized.
Widely considered one of the greatest American plays of all time, Our Town is also Wilder's most frequently staged play. It debuted on Broadway in 1938 and continues to be performed daily on stages all around the world.
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The Selected Letters of Thornton Wilder
by Thornton Wilder, Jackson R. Bryer, Robin Gibbs 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.
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Thornton Wilder:The Bridge of San Luis Rey and Other Novels 1926-1948 (Library of America No. 194)
Thornton Wilder was the rare writer whose achievements as a playwright were matched by equal abilities as a novelist. As companion to its volume of Wilder's collected plays, The Library of America's edition of his early novels and stories brings together five novels that highlight his wit, erudition, innovative formal structures, and philosophical wisdom.
Drawing on the post-collegiate year he spent in Rome, Wilder fashioned in The Cabala a tale of youthful enchantment with the Eternal City in the form of a fictitious memoir of an American student and the enigmatic coterie of noble Romans who draw him into their midst. He followed this debut novel two years later with The Bridge of San Luis Rey, which catapulted him to literary prominence and earned him the first of his three Pulitzer prizes. Set in 18th-century Peru, the book is a kind of theological detective story concerning a friar's investigations into the lives of five individuals before they were killed in a bridge collapse. An elegantly told parable, with credible historical ambience and psychologically rounded characters, The Bridge of San Luis Rey is primarily a probing inquiry into the nature of destiny: Why did God allow these particular people to die?
The Woman of Andros, based on the Andria of Roman writer Terence, is a meditation on the ancient world filtered through the sensibility of a meditative courtesan; Heaven's My Destination, a departure from Wilder's historical themes, is a picaresque romp through Depression-era America; and The Ides of March takes up the story of Julius Caesar's assassination by imagining the exchange of letters among such prominent ancient figures as Catullus, Cleopatra, Cicero, and Caesar himself, "groping in the open seas of his unlimited power for the first principles which should guide him." The volume concludes with a selection of early short stories--among them "Précautions Inutiles," published here for the first time--and a selection of essays that offers Wilder's insights into the works of Stein and Joyce, as well as a lecture on letter writers that bears on both The Bridge of San Luis Rey and The Ides of March.
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.
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Thornton Wilder: The Eighth Day, Theophilus North, Autobiographical Writings (LOA #224) (Library of America Thornton Wider Edition)
"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.
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Theophilus North A Novel
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.
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Three Plays: Our Town, The Skin of Our Teeth, and The Matchmaker
“Thornton Wilder will survive. . . as long as there are people around who are willing to sit in something called a theater and be reminded of their common humanity.” —New York Times
From celebrated Pulitzer Prize-winning author and playwright Thornton Wilder, three of the greatest plays in American literature together in one volume: Our Town, The Skin of Our Teeth, and The Matchmaker. This essential compendium includes a preface by the author, as well as a foreword by playwright John Guare.
Our Town, Wilder's timeless Pulitzer Prize-winning classic about love, death, and destiny, opened on Broadway in 1938 and continues to be celebrated and performed on stages all around the world.
The Skin of our Teeth, Wilder's brilliant and enduring romp about human follies and human endurance starring the Antrobus family of Excelsior, New Jersey, earned Wilder his third Pulitzer Prize in 1943.
The Matchmaker, a dazzling farce about money and love, stars the irrepressible busybody Dolly Gallagher Levi, who leads young and old on an adventure that changes their lives. It was later adapted into the famed musical Hello, Dolly!
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The Bridge of San Luis Rey: A Novel
Thornton Wilder’s classic novel—now available in a limited Olive Edition—features previously unpublished notes and other illuminating documentary material as well as an updated afterword by his nephew, Tappan Wilder, and a foreword by Russell Banks.
"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, one of the towering achievements in American fiction, and a novel read throughout the world, begins.
By fate or chance, a monk has witnessed the collapse. Brother Juniper, moved by the tragedy, embarks on a quest to prove a higher order is at work in the deaths of those who perished. His search leads readers on a timeless investigation into the nature of love and the meaning of the human condition.
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The Collected Short Plays of Thornton Wilder, Vol. 1
Volume One of the collected short plays by one of the greatest American playwrights of the Twentieth Century.
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The Bridge of San Luis Rey
This Pulitzer Prize-winning, fable-like short novel—by the author of Our Town and The Skin of Our Teeth—has been beloved around the world for nearly a century.
This splendid and profoundly moving novel begins with a simple and seemingly senseless tragedy. "On Friday noon, July the twentieth, 1714, the finest bridge in all Peru broke and precipitated five travelers into the gulf below." A traveling monk, Brother Juniper, witnesses the catastrophe and becomes obsessed with investigating the lives of the five victims in order to prove that their deaths had meaning. His mission is doomed to fail, but over the course of the story, the five unlucky individuals—a noblewoman, a maid, an orphan, an old man, and a child—come to life for the reader in all of their glorious complexity. Their intertwined lives—snuffed out in one shattering moment—illuminate the biggest questions that we can ask ourselves about the nature of love and meaning of the human condition.
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The Bridge of San Luis Rey
The authorized, original edition of Thornton Wilder's Pulitzer Prize-winning classic with a foreword by acclaimed author Russell Banks and an afterword by Wilder's nephew, Tappan Wilder, with illuminating documentary material about the novel and its rich literary history.
"As close to perfect a moral fable as we are ever likely to get in American literature." --Russell Banks
"There are books that haunt you down the years, books that seem to touch and stir something deep inside you. . . . Wilder's The Bridge of San Luis Rey is of this kind." --The Independent (London)
"On Friday noon, July the twentieth, 1714, the finest bridge in all Peru broke and precipitated five travelers into the gulf below." This immortal sentence opens The Bridge of San Luis Rey, one of the towering achievements in American literature, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, and a novel still read throughout the world.
Brother Juniper, a Franciscan monk, witnesses the tragic event. Deeply moved, he embarks on a quest to prove that it was divine intervention, not chance, that led to the deaths of the five people crossing the bridge that day. Ultimately, his search leads to a timeless investigation into the nature of fate and love, and the meaning of the human condition.
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