THE WILDER FAMILY
Thornton Wilder’s family was filled with successful, highly educated and accomplished people. His father, Amos Parker Wilder (1862-1936), was editor and part owner of the Wisconsin State Journal and the United States Consul General to Hong Kong and Shanghai. His mother, Isabella Thornton Niven Wilder (1873-1946), was a cultured, educated woman who instilled a love of literature, drama and languages in her children, and who wrote vivid poetry. Thornton’s older brother, Amos Niven Wilder, was a highly acclaimed professor of New Testament scholarship, an insightful essayist, and a distinguished poet, as well as a tennis champion. Thornton’s sister Charlotte was a professor of English and an award-winning poet. Sister Isabel was the author of three popular novels, a graduate of Yale School of Drama and the curator of Yale University’s theater archive. Thornton’s youngest sister, Janet Wilder Dakin, was a professor of biology, an author, and a noted environmentalist. Indeed, the Wilder family made its mark across generations and in many different fields.
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AMOS TAPPAN WILDER, NEPHEW
Tappan is Thornton Wilder's nephew and for twenty-five years served as his literary executor until 2024. He has played a similar role for the literary legacies of Wilder's three sisters and brother, all of whom were also authors. He speaks widely about his uncle’s life, work and family.
As literary executor of Thornton Wilder’s works, Tappan oversaw a major re-issue of Wilder’s seven novels and major plays, published by HarperCollins. For each work, he contributed Afterwords containing an overview, brief history of the work and several selected readings. With the late Donald Gallup, he compiled and edited TCG’s two-volume edition of Thornton Wilder short plays. Working with Rosey Strub, Manager of Wilder’s works, Tappan revisited all of Wilder’s Samuel French acting editions. The resulting editions feature textual corrections, updated stage directions and special notes. This muti-year project included the 2012 release of the definitive acting edition of Our Town. Tappan has also overseen Wipf & Stock's re-publication of seventeen of Amos Niven Wilder’s works covering the fields of New Testament studies, literature and religion, literary criticism and poetry.
Tappan also selected and worked closely with Penelope Niven, author of Thornton Wilder: A Life (2013); and J.D. McClatchy, editor of the Library of America’s three volumes devoted to Thornton Wilder’s drama and fiction (2007, 2009, 2011), and Robin G. Wilder and Jackson R. Bryer, editors of The Selected Letters of Thornton Wilder (2008). These foundational works for understanding Thornton Wilder’s work, life and family utilized extensive Wilder family archival materials never before available to researchers.
Tappan is also responsible for adding four heretofore unpublished one-act plays and four playlets to the public record, and opening the door for several subsidiary works based on Wilder drama and fiction, including: the Our Town opera (libretto by J.D. McClatchy, score by Ned Rorem); his adaptation of George Farquhar’s The Beaux’ Stratagem (begun by Wilder in 1939 and completed by Ken Ludwig in 2006); and stage adaptations of the novels Theophilus North and The Bridge of San Luis Rey by, respectively, playwrights Matthew Burnett and David Greenspan. In 2016 he arranged the first publication of Wilder’s Broadway record-breaking translation of A Doll’s House published in trade edition by TCG Press and an acting edition by Samuel French. He is currently researching Wilder’s non-fiction, his record as lecturer and teacher, and the history of his uncle’s one-act plays.
Tappan was born in 1940 and raised in Chicago and the Boston area. He is a graduate of Yale College (1962) and holds an MA in American history from the University of Wisconsin (Madison) and a M. Phil in American Studies from Yale. In 1962-3 he was the recipient of a Rockefeller Brothers Fellowship in Theological Education taken at Union Theological Seminary (NYC). He held administrative positions at Yale for fifteen years, before moving to Washington, DC to work principally in the urban and heath care fields. He has lived in Northern California since 2016.
Tappan is the Honorary Chair of The Thornton Wilder Society, a member of PEN (American Center) and the National Council of Graywolf Press. He is an honorary trustee of Long Wharf Theatre in New Haven and a former Trustee of the Yale Library Associates. Whenever possible he escapes to Maine, home of his daughter, Jenney, and granddaughter Niven.
AMOS NIVEN WILDER (1895-1993), BROTHER
Thornton’s older brother Amos Niven Wilder (1895-1993) received his B.A., B.D., and Ph.D. from Yale and also studied at Oxford, the University of Brussels, and several other schools in Europe. During World War I, he served with the American Field Service (AFS) in France and Macedonia and as a corporal of artillery with the American Expeditionary Forces. He was ordained a Congregational American minister in 1926. Following a pastorate for several years in North Conway, New Hampshire, he went on to a teaching and scholarly career at Hamilton College, Andover Newton Theological School, Chicago Theological School, the University of Chicago, and finally Harvard Divinity School, where he became Hollis Professor of Divinity. Amos Wilder was also a prize-winning poet, literary critic, and nationally-ranked tennis player. At the time of his death, he was the oldest living man who had played on center court at Wimbledon. He married Catharine Kerlin in 1935. They had two children, Catharine Dix and Amos Tappan.
CHARLOTTE WILDER (1898-1980), SISTER
From the Thornton Wilder Society Website
Thornton Wilder’s oldest sister Charlotte Wilder (1898-1980) was a poet who shared the Shelley Memorial Award for Poetry in 1937 with Ben Belitt. She attended high schools in Berkeley, California, and in China, and graduated from Berkeley High School. She received an M.A. degree from Radcliffe, and went on to a teaching career at Wheaton College and Smith College. In 1934, Charlotte moved to New York to devote all her time to writing. In 1941, she suffered a severe nervous breakdown. With the exception of periods in the early 1950s, she remained in institutions the rest of her life.
ISABEL WILDER (1900 – 1995), SISTER
From the Thornton Wilder Society Website
Thornton’s sister Isabel Wilder (1900-1995) attended some thirteen schools by the time she was twenty. As a result she never attended college. She was, however, a member of the first graduating class of the Yale School of Drama (1928) and wrote three successful novels in the 1930s. She never married. Of all the Wilder family members, Isabel was closest to Thornton, remaining his personal agent, spokesperson, hostess and representative in this country and abroad. After 1930, Isabel made her permanent residence with her parents and, following their deaths, with her brother Thornton in the family home in Hamden, Connecticut.
JANET WILDER DAKIN (1910-1994), SISTER
From the Thornton Wilder Society Website
Thornton Wilder’s youngest sister, Janet Wilder (1910-1994), was the only Wilder child born in Berkeley, California. She attended schools in Berkeley and Oxford, England, and was graduated from New Haven High School in Connecticut. She then went to Mount Holyoke College, where she earned her B.A. degree in 1933, magna cum laude; she was also elected to Phi Beta Kappa. She earned an M.A. in biology in 1935, and completed a Ph.D. in zoology at the University of Chicago in 1939. She then returned to Mount Holyoke to teach.
In 1941, Janet Wilder married Winthrop Saltonstall (Toby) Dakin, an attorney and civic leader, and they lived in Amherst, Massachusetts. They had no children, and Janet devoted her energy to conservation issues, equestrians affairs, and animal rights. She wrote a book about raising a Morgan horse. At her death in 1994, she was remembered as “The First Lady of Amherst.”