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.

Finding the theatre of the 1920s lacking in bite and conviction, Thornton Wilder set out to bring back realism and to celebrate the innocent, simple and religious. Yet he also tried to endow individual experience with cosmic significance and Our Town is both an affectionate portrait of American life and ''an attempt to find a value above all price for the smallest events in our daily life''. The Skin of our Teeth deals with human survival in a ''comic strip'' way, and The Matchmaker is a hilarious farce which urges rebellion against all the constraints that deny a rich, full life.

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

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.

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.

“[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. 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. Often 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.

Drawing on such unique sources as the author''s unpublished letters, business records, and obscure family recollections, Tappan Wilder''s Afterword adds a special dimension to the reissue of this hilarious tale about goodness in a fallen world. Meet George Marvin Brush—Don Quixote come to Main Street in the Great Depression, and one of Thornton Wilder''s most memorable characters. George 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 America itself.

“[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.

"An extremely entertaining array of American life in a bygone era." --The New Yorker The last of Thornton Wilder''s works published during his lifetime, Theophilus North 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 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

Le 20 juillet 1714 à midi, le plus beau pont de tout le Pérou, une passerelle de corde inca, se rompt. Cinq voyageurs sont alors précipités dans le vide, sous les yeux du frère franciscain Genièvre, qui voit dans cette catastrophe l''occasion rêvée de prouver avec rigueur l''existence vengeuse de Dieu. Le Pont de San Luis Rey est un grand roman de la littérature américaine, un classique, récompensé par le prix Pulitzer en 1928, et lu à travers le monde entier.

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.

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.

The play tells the story of two young bucks who, having spent all their money by living too well, leave London and roam from town to town in search of love and fortune. In order to find a wealthy heiress for at least one of them, they pose as master and servant ¿ exchanging roles from one town to the next. In Lichfield, Aimwell is the master and Archer the servant, and there they meet the lovely, wealthy Dorinda and her equally desirable sister-in-law, Mrs. Kate Sullen. They set their caps for these women, but problems abound. Kate is married to a drunken sot who despises her; the innkeeper¿s saucy daughter, Cherry, has set her cap for Archer; Dorinda¿s mother, Lady Bountiful, mistakenly believes herself to be a great healer of the sick, and she guards her daughter like a dragoness; and a band of brigands plans to rob the house of Lady Bountiful that very night, putting all schemes in jeopardy. This is a play in the great tradition of Goldsmith¿s She Stoops to Conquer and Sheridan¿s The Rivals and The School for Scandal. It is classic, formal, robust and hilarious.

Thornton Wilder (1897-1975) es uno de los escritores más importantes e influyentes del siglo xx. Profesor en las universidades de Harvard y Chicago, en toda su obra se refleja su cosmopolitismo, una amplia y sólida formación humanística y unas extraordinarias dotes de observación de la vida cotidiana. Su primera novela, La Cábala (1926) obtuvo ya un notable éxito de crítica, pero fue El puente de San Luis Rey (1927), por la que obtuvo su primer Premio Pulitzer, la que le situó en primera línea de las letras en lengua inglesa. Sin embargo, fueron sus obras teatrales, y en particular Nuestro Pueblo (Premio Pulitzer 1938 y llevada al cine en 1940 por Sam Wood), La Casamentera (llevada también al cine, por Joseph Anthony, con Shiley MacLaine y Anthony Perkins) y La piel de nuestros dientes (Premio Pulitzer 1943), así como la novela histórica Los idus de marzo (1948), las que le convirtieron en una celebridad.

El dia 20 de juliol de 1714, va cedir i es va ensorrar un vell pont inca, penjat sobre un congost impressionant en el camí que sortia de Lima per anar a Cuzco. L''ensulsiada va precipitar a l''abisme les cinc persones que llavors el creuaven

Volume One of the collected short plays by one of the greatest American playwrights of the Twentieth Century.

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.

"A father, mother and two of their three surviving children drive from Newark, New Jersey, to Camden to visit their married daughter, who has recently lost her baby in childbirth. Their journey is punctuated by talk, laughter, memories (some mundane, some happy, some painful), and appreciation of the Now - ham and eggs, flowers, family, sunsets and the joy of being alive. In this family drama, nothing much happens-and yet everything important happens. As Ma Kirby says, "There''s nothin'' like bein'' liked by your family." - Publisher''s website.

Millie the nursemaid brings baby Tommy to Central Park in the hopes of a rendezvous with the handsome Patrolman Avonzino. Mrs. Boker soon arrives with baby Moe, and as the two ladies trade snacks and advice on child rearing, the infants compare notes on their parents'' bad behavior and pitiful lack of understanding. Babies act like grown-ups and grown-ups act like babies in this comedy about fulfilling basic human needs.

In 45 v.C., één jaar voor hij vermoord zal worden, blikt de Romeinse diktator C. Julius Caesar (100 v.C.-44 v.C.) terug op zijn leven en loopbaan.