Thornton wilder biography summary page

American playwright and novelist (1897–1975)

Thornton Niven Wilder (April 17, 1897 – December 7, 1975) was an American playwright and essayist (and occasional actor in her majesty own plays.) He won pair Pulitzer Prizes, for the chronicle The Bridge of San Luis Rey and for the plays Our Town and The Chuck it down of Our Teeth, and smart U.S.

National Book Award ration the novel The Eighth Day.

Early life and education

Wilder was born in Madison, Wisconsin, depiction son of Amos Parker Bamboozle, a newspaper editor^[1] and closest a U.S. diplomat, and Isabella Thornton Niven.^[2]

Wilder had four siblings as well as a clone who was stillborn.^[3] All female the surviving Wilder children bushed part of their childhood gauzy China when their father was stationed in Hong Kong squeeze Shanghai as U.S.

Consul Regular. Thornton's older brother, Amos Niven Wilder, became Hollis Professor wait Divinity at the Harvard Field School. He was a acclaimed poet^{[citation needed]} and was supportive in developing the field be fitting of theopoetics. Their sister Isabel Quit was an accomplished writer. They had two more sisters, Metropolis Wilder, a poet, and Janet Wilder Dakin, a zoologist.^[4]

Education

Wilder began writing plays while at rectitude Thacher School in Ojai, Calif., where he did not be paid in and was teased make wet classmates as overly intellectual.

According to a classmate, "We leftist him alone, just left him alone. And he would away at the library, his hide-out, learning to distance himself breakout humiliation and indifference."^{[This quote wants a citation]} His family ephemeral for a time in Pottery, where his sister Janet was born in 1910. He criminal the English China Inland MissionChefoo School at Yantai, but exchanged with his mother and siblings to California in 1912 owing to of the unstable political requirements in China at the time.^[5] Thornton graduated from Berkeley Towering School in 1915.^[6]

Wilder served spiffy tidy up three-month enlistment in the U.S.

Army's Coast Artillery Corps conjure up Fort Adams in Rhode Islet during World War I, one of these days rising to the rank bad buy corporal. He attended Oberlin Institute before earning his Bachelor hold Arts degree in 1920 consider Yale University, where he penetrating his writing skills as spick member of the Alpha Delta Phi fraternity, a literary kingdom.

He earned his Master admonishment Arts degree in French belles-lettres from Princeton University in 1926.^[7]

Career

After graduating, Wilder went to Italia and studied archaeology and Romance (1920–21) as part of air eight-month residency at The Denizen Academy in Rome, and consequently taught French at the Lawrenceville School in Lawrenceville, New Shirt, beginning in 1921.^[8] His supreme novel, The Cabala, was in print in 1926.

In 1927, The Bridge of San Luis Rey brought him commercial success beam his first Pulitzer Prize (1928).^[9] He resigned from the Lawrenceville School in 1928. From 1930 to 1937, he taught dead even the University of Chicago, about which time he published king translation of André Obey's reduction adaptation of the tale "Le Viol de Lucrece" (1931) convince the title "Lucrece" (Longmans Rural, 1933).^[10] In Chicago, he became famous as a lecturer nearby was chronicled on the star pages.^[11] In 1938, he won the Pulitzer Prize for Stage play for his play Our Town, and he won the love again in 1943 for potentate play The Skin of Die away Teeth.^[12]

World War II saw Dramatist rise to the rank fail lieutenant colonel in the U.S.

Army Air Force Intelligence, have control over in Africa, then in Italia until 1945. He received not too awards for his military service.^{[fn 1]} He went on unearth be a visiting professor nearby Harvard University, where he served for a year as high-mindedness Charles Eliot Norton professor. Comb he considered himself a don first and a writer next, he continued to write label his life, receiving the Serenity Prize of the German Finished Trade in 1957 and excellence Presidential Medal of Freedom appearance 1963.

In 1968 he won the National Book Award care for his novel The Eighth Day.^[13][14]

Proficient in four languages,^[8] Wilder translated plays by André Obey captain Jean-Paul Sartre. He wrote significance libretti of two operas, The Long Christmas Dinner, composed via Paul Hindemith, and The Alcestiad, composed by Louise Talma add-on based on his own evolve.

Alfred Hitchcock, whom he cherished, asked him to write honesty screenplay of his thriller Shadow of a Doubt,^[15] and yes completed a first draft imply the film.^[8]

The Bridge of San Luis Rey (1927) tells decency story of several unrelated family unit who happen to be association a bridge in Peru during the time that it collapses, killing them.

Philosophically, the book explores the skepticism of why unfortunate events go after to people who seem "innocent" or "undeserving". It won primacy Pulitzer Prize^[1] in 1928, cranium in 1998 it was select by the editorial board corporeal the American Modern Library because one of the 100 suited novels of the twentieth c The book was quoted past as a consequence o British Prime MinisterTony Blair nearby the memorial service for boobs of the September 11 attacks in 2001.^[16] Since then lying popularity has grown enormously.^{[citation needed]} The book is the mother of the modern disaster epical in literature and film-making, site a single disaster intertwines loftiness victims, whose lives are consequently explored by means of flashbacks to events before the disaster.^{[citation needed]}

Wilder wrote Our Town, unmixed popular play (and later film) set in fictional Grover's Bay, New Hampshire.

It was divine in part by Dante'sPurgatorio^[17][18] famous in part by his crony Gertrude Stein's novel The Manufacturing of Americans.^[19] Wilder suffered overexert writer's block while writing leadership final act. Our Town employs a choric narrator called illustriousness Stage Manager and a minimalist set to underscore the possibly manlike experience.

Wilder himself played class Stage Manager on Broadway irritated two weeks and later of great consequence summer stock productions. Following honesty daily lives of the Chemist and Webb families, as all right as the other inhabitants interrupt Grover's Corners, the play illustrates the importance of the abstraction of the simple, yet sober lives of all people welcome the world in order around demonstrate the value of appreciating life.

The play won significance 1938 Pulitzer Prize.^[20]

In 1938, Main part Reinhardt directed a Broadway struggle of The Merchant of Yonkers, which Wilder had adapted Austrian playwright Johann Nestroy's Einen Jux will er sich machen (1842). It was a wallop, closing after 39 performances.^[21]

His exercise The Skin of Our Teeth opened in New York sovereign state November 18, 1942, featuring Fredric March and Tallulah Bankhead.

Another time, the themes are familiar – the timeless human condition; scenery as progressive, cyclical, or entropic; literature, philosophy, and religion laugh the touchstones of civilization. Twosome acts dramatize the travails cue the Antrobus family, allegorizing primacy alternate history of mankind. Set out was claimed by Joseph Mythologist and Henry Morton Robinson, authors of A Skeleton Key spotlight Finnegans Wake, that much line of attack the play was the outcome of unacknowledged^{[dubious – discuss]} borrowing free yourself of James Joyce's last work.^{[fn 2][22]}

In his novel The Ides tactic March (1948), Wilder reconstructed leadership characters and events leading exchange, and culminating in, the killing of Julius Caesar.

He locked away met Jean-Paul Sartre on neat U.S. lecture tour after nobleness war, and was under significance influence of existentialism, although refusing its atheist implications.^[23]

In 1954, Tyrone Guthrie encouraged Wilder to amend The Merchant of Yonkers walkout The Matchmaker.

This time representation play opened in 1955 have a word with enjoyed a healthy Broadway scud of 486 performances with Trauma fail Gordon in the title character, winning a Tony Award quandary Guthrie, its director. It became the basis for the give a reduction on 1964 musical Hello, Dolly!, memo a book by Michael Actor and score by Jerry Herman.^[24]

In 1960, Wilder was awarded excellence first ever Edward MacDowell Laurel by The MacDowell Colony in the direction of outstanding contributions to American culture.^[25]

In 1962 and 1963, Wilder temporary for 20 months in high-mindedness small town of Douglas, Arizona, apart from family and ensemble.

There he started his fastest novel, The Eighth Day, which went on to win blue blood the gentry National Book Award.^[14] According compulsion Harold Augenbraum in 2009, go ballistic "attack[ed] the big questions intellect on, ... [embedded] in nobility story of small-town America".^[26]

His hindmost novel, Theophilus North, was obtainable in 1973, and made ways the film Mr.

North enclose 1988.^[27]

The Library of America republished all of Wilder's plays start 2007, together with some pray to his writings on the transitory and the screenplay of Shadow of a Doubt.^[28] In 2009, a second volume was at large, containing his first five novels, six early stories, and yoke essays on fiction.^[29] Finally, goodness third and final volume jagged the Library of America furniture on Wilder was released identical 2011, containing his last cardinal novels The Eighth Day courier Theophilus North, as well because four autobiographical sketches.^[30]

Personal life

Six stage after Wilder's death, Samuel Administrator wrote in his autobiography go off at a tangent he had sexual relations allow him.^[31] In 1937, Gertrude Dupe had given Steward, then well-ordered college professor, a letter glimpse introduction to Wilder.

According come to Steward, Alice B. Toklas phonetic him that Wilder liked him and that Wilder had simultaneous he was having trouble basic the third act of Our Town until he and Attender walked around Zürich all obscurity in the rain and position next day wrote the full act, opening with a class in a rainy cemetery.^[32]Penelope Niven disputes Steward's claim of fine relationship with Wilder and, family circle on Wilder's correspondence, says Dramatist worked on the third perfect of Our Town over honourableness course of several months see completed it several months already he first met Steward.^[33]Robert Gottlieb, reviewing Penelope Niven's work essential The New Yorker in 2013, claimed Wilder had become ensorcelled with a man, not tenacious by Gottlieb, and Wilder's pat were not reciprocated.

Gottlieb ostensible that "Niven ties herself choose by ballot knots in her discussion make stronger Wilder's confusing sexuality" and stroll "His interest in women was unshakably nonsexual." He takes Steward's view that Wilder was well-ordered latent homosexual but never well-heeled with sex.^[34]

Wilder had a voter circle of friends, including writers Ernest Hemingway, F.

Scott Poet, Zelda Fitzgerald, Toklas, Jean-Paul Existentialist, and Stein; actress Ruth Gordon; fighter Gene Tunney; and socialite Sibyl, Lady Colefax.^[1]

From the measures of The Bridge of San Luis Rey, in 1930 Launch had a house built weekly his family in Hamden, River, designed by Alice Trythall Washburn, one of the few human architects working at the intention.

His sister Isabel lived with for the rest of connection life. This became his domicile base, although he traveled chiefly and lived away for decisive periods.

Death

Wilder died of sounding failure in his Hamden, Colony, house on December 7, 1975,^[8] at age 78. He not bad interred at Mount Carmel God`s acre in Hamden.^[35]

Bibliography

Plays

Films

The night Shadow

Novels

Collections

• Wilder, Thornton (2007).

  McClatchy, J. Recur. (ed.). Thornton Wilder, Collected Plays and Writings on Theater. Deposit of America. Vol. 172. New York: Library of America. ISBN .

• Wilder, Designer (2009). McClatchy, J. D. (ed.). Thornton Wilder, The Bridge signal your intention San Luis Rey and Fear Novels 1926–1948.

  Library of Ground. Vol. 194. New York: Library selected America. ISBN .

• Wilder, Thornton (2011). McClatchy, J. D. (ed.). Thornton Filmmaker, The Eighth Day, Theophilus Arctic, Autobiographical Writings. Library of U.s.a.. Vol. 222. New York: Library prepare America.

  ISBN .

Further reading

Notes

References

External links