A 2023 WILDER GIFT GUIDE
A CURATED COLLECTION OF BOOKS AND PLAYS FOR INSPIRATION THIS HOLIDAY SEASOn
FOR THE HISTORY BUFF
In his 1948 bestseller, The Ides of March, Wilder brings to life Julius Caesar’s Rome through a rich tapestry of letters and documents. 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 of Rome comes crowding through these 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. This edition features new introduction by Jeremy McCarter co-author of Hamilton: The Revolution and an afterward by Tappan Wilder that includes illuminating documentary material.
FOR THE DRAMA DEVOTEE
Our Town returns to Broadway in 2024, helmed by legendary director Kenny Leon. Discover or revisit Wilder's brilliant Pulitzer Prize-winning play before tickets go on sale! The three acts of Our Town–growing up, adulthood, and death--capture the universal experience of being alive. The village of Grover's Corners, New Hampshire, home to Emily Webb and George Gibbs, gradually becomes the world. This special edition includes an afterword by Wilder's nephew, Tappan Wilder, with previously unseen material about the playwright and his most produced play.
FOR THE THEATRE FAN-ON-THE-GO
This collection of Wilder's most famous one-act plays includes Such Things Only Happen in Books, Queens of France, Pullman Car Hiawatha, The Happy Journey to Trenton and Camden, and the perennial holiday classic The Long Christmas Dinner. In these mini-masterpieces--performed or read in 20 minutes or less--Thornton Wilder experiments with techniques and dramatic forms and themes he would later develop in his celebrated full-length works including The Matchmaker, Our Town and The Skin of Our Teeth.
FOR THE GOSSIP LOVER
In The Selected Letters of Thornton Wilder, eavesdrop on conversations with a host of his famous friends from the literary salons in Paris to stars from Hollywood’s Golden Age including Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, Noël Coward, Gene Tunney, Laurence Olivier, Aaron Copland, Leonard Bernstein, Edward Albee, and Mia Farrow. Wilder tells of roller-skating with Walt Disney, filmmaking with Alfred Hitchcock, 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.
FOR THE CRIME FICTION AFICIONADO
Set in a mining town in southern Illinois, The Eighth Day 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. Winner of the 1968 National Book Award, The New York Times called Wilder’s Midwestern murder mystery “suspenseful and deeply moving.” This beautiful volume from Library of America also includes his last novel Theophilus North as well as a collection of Wilder’s autobiographical writings.