Free Thornton Wilder by Penelope Niven

Deepwood Drive, Hamden, Connecticut, built by Thornton for his family. The Wilders called this “the house The Bridge built,” because Thornton’s royalties from the novel paid for the design and construction. (Courtesy of the Wilder Family LLC and YCAL.)

    A page from the first manuscript draft of Our Town , 1937. (Courtesy of the Wilder Family LLC and YCAL.)

    Thornton standing beside his Chrysler convertible with a rumble seat, his 1939 Christmas gift from producer Sol Lesser for his help with the film adaptation of Our Town. (Courtesy of the Wilder Family LLC and YCAL.)

    Thornton Wilder with Ellen Weston and Robert Hock in Our Town , Williamstown Theatre, Williamstown, Massachusetts, 1959. This was Wilder’s final theatrical performance as the Stage Manager. (Photograph by William Tague. Courtesy of the Williamstown Theatre Festival.)

    Lieutenant Colonel Wilder serving as an intelligence officer in the U.S. Army Air Forces, World War II, 1945. (Courtesy of the Wilder Family LLC and YCAL.)

    The novelist, playwright, lecturer, and global citizen in midcareer, undated photograph. (Photograph by LeTrelle. Courtesy of the Wilder Family LLC and YCAL.)

    Thornton Wilder and American actress and singer Ethel Waters after their arrival at West Berlin’s Tempelhof Airport, September 11, 1957, for performances in Wilder’s one-act plays at Congress Hall. (Photograph by Kreusch/AP Photo. Courtesy of AP Images.)

    Wilder with Ruth Gordon and Garson Kanin in Williamstown, 1959. (Photograph by William Tague. Courtesy of the Williamstown Theatre Festival.)

    Thornton Wilder, the perennial traveler, on his way to board the train in New Haven for one more departure, May 1960. (Courtesy of the Wilder Family LLC and YCAL.)

    Wilder receiving the first-ever National Medal for Literature from the National Book Committee, in a ceremony at the White House with Lady Bird Johnson and Donald McGannon, television broadcasting executive and president of the National Book Committee, May 4, 1965. (Courtesy of the Wilder Family LLC and YCAL.)

    Wilder sails for Italy aboard the American Export Lines SS Independence , November 18, 1955. (© Bettmann/CORBIS. Courtesy of CORBIS Images.)
    He was a refined gypsy, wandering the world, writing, he said, for and about “Everybody.”

ALSO BY PENELOPE NIVEN
    Â 
    NONFICTION
    Carl Sandburg: A Biography
    Voices and Silences
    (coauthor with James Earl Jones)
    Steichen: A Biography
    Swimming Lessons
    Â 
    NONFICTION FOR CHILDREN
    Carl Sandburg: Adventures of a Poet

CREDITS
    The author and the publisher gratefully acknowledge the consent of the Wilder Family LLC, courtesy of The Barbara Hogenson Agency, to print the published and unpublished writings of Thornton Wilder and the Wilder family, as well as the photographs of Thornton Wilder and the Wilder family.
    Cover design by Richard Ljoenes
Cover photograph of Thornton Wilder playing the Stage Manager in Our Town courtesy of Special Collections, The College of Wooster Libraries

COPYRIGHT
    THORNTON WILDER . Copyright © 2012 by Penelope Niven. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks.
    FIRST EDITION
    Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for.
    ISBN 978-0-06-083136-3
    Epub Edition © NOVEMBER 2012 ISBN: 9780062097774
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