Bøger af Thornton Wilder

The drunken sisters. Apollo challenges The Three Fates to a life-and-death battle of wits, but despite their taste for liquor, the sisters win the wager.

The essence of Mr. Wilders book is really the feeling in it; it is a notation of the heart with sympathy. Gaily or sadly, but always with understanding, a belief in the miracle of love runs through it all. --TimesLiterary Supplement(London)"e;On Friday noon, July the twentieth, 1714, the finest bridge in all Peru broke and precipitated five travelers into the gulf below."e; With this celebrated sentence Thornton Wilder beginsThe Bridge of San Luis Rey,winner of the Pulitzer Prize, one of the towering achievements in American fiction, and a novel beloved throughout the world.By chance, a monk witnesses the tragedy. Brother Juniper then embarks on a quest to prove that it was divine intervention rather than chance that led to the deaths of those who perished in the tragedy. His search leads to his own deathand to Wilders timeless investigation into the nature of love and the meaning of the human condition.This edition includes a foreword by acclaimed author Russell Banks and features previously unpublished notes and other illuminating documentary material about the novel and author.

"Among these plays [Wilder's most famous one-acts] we encounter a first glimpse of Wilder's Stage Manager, his use of pantomime, minimal scenery and farce, as well as his signature connection between the commonplace and the cosmic dimensions of the human experience"--P. [4] of cover.

One morning in the late summer of 1930 the proprietor and several guests at the Union Hotel at Crestcrego, Texas, were annoyed to discover Biblical texts freshly written across the blotter on the public writing-desk. George Marvin Brush is a travelling textbook salesman and fervent religious convert, determined to lead the godless to a better 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 1930s America.

"e;Mr. Wilder has brought to his character the warmth which was totally lacking in the Caesar of schoolbooks and Shakespeare, and in his hero's destruction there is the true catharsis."e;-Edward Weeks, AtlanticFirst published in 1948, The Ides of March is a brilliant epistolary novel of the Rome of Julius Caesar. Through imaginary letters and documents, Wilder brings to life a dramatic period of world history and one of its magnetic personalities. In this novel, 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 Rome comes crowding through his 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 in his Rome.

Drawing on such unique sources as the authors unpublished letters, business records, and obscure family recollections, Tappan Wilders Afterword adds a special dimension to the reissue of this hilarious tale about goodness in a fallen world.Meet George Marvin BrushDon Quixote come to Main Street in the Great Depression, and one of Thornton Wilders 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 Illinoisand into the soul of America itself.

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."

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.

The year is 1898 and the place is an over-sumptuous parlor in New York. Mrs. Mowbrey, a mature, wealthy woman with a history to bury, makes a plan--she'll befriend her estranged niece and fiancé, and their subsequent marriage will provide her own entre into respectable society. Or at least, that's what she tells the young couple. In Shakespeare and the Bible uncovers a mystery inside a melodrama inside a meeting. Mrs. Mowbrey invites her niece, Katy and her niece's fiancé Mr. Lubbock to her home separately and unbeknownst to each other. Mr. Lubbock arrives first, and is asked to become Mr. Mowbrey's attorney. Katy comes later, to meet this aunt who has fallen from her family's good graces for unknown reasons. With all three in the room, it becomes apparent that Mr. Lubbock and Mrs. Mowbrey share something that's not deemed proper for Katy to know. Yet Katy insists they tell her. When Mrs. Mowbrey leaves the room, insisting that they work things out among themselves, the mystery looms large. Katy discovers their secret and the true intent of Mrs. Mowbrey's agenda hangs in the balance: Did she intend to use her wealth to buy respectability and family relations? Or exact revenge?

A mother-daughter team of con-artists are putting the touch on the widows of military brass. Mrs. McCullem, housekeep for the wonderfully regal but now wheel chair-bound window of General Beattie, recognizes them in the drug store--having witnessed the two pull their game on her previous employer--and overhears them asking directions to the Beattie home! The play begins as she rushes back to warn Mrs. Beattie of the impending danger. Sure enough, the doorbell rings and our charlatans appear with quite a story. But instead of throwing them out or turning them over to the police, the widow Beattie allows the game to be played.

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

Portion of edition statements from introductory material.

In New Orleans in 1869, M'su Cahusac, a charlatan of a lawyer, preys on vulnerable women, convincing each one that she is a legitimate descendant of the long-lost Dauphin, who fled Paris for New Orleans at the age of 10 during the French Revolution. Therefore, he tells each victim, she is the rightful Queen of France. Tantalized by visions of wealth, palaces and power, each victim responds in her own fashion to this preposterous revelation, which the lawyer claims is supported by the Historical

Diana Colvin, 21, rich and "the finest girl in the world," is engaged to marry Roger Osterman, 27, very rich and "the finest young fellow in the world." With the help of a mystified waiter, Diana's uncle (her lawyer and guardian) sets up a play within a play to make sure Diana knows what she is getting into: marriage to a supreme tightwad who can give away millions to charity, but can't leave a tip. The action--full of high-jinks as well as a serious message--takes place in a fancy New York City hotel.

In this play, which represents "Sloth" in Wilder's projected cycle on The Seven Deadly Sins, Herb Hawkins, a jovial New Jersey - New York City commuter with iron-bound habits, has called to say he is coming home late. This news sets his wife and daughter on edge, a condition heightened when a neighbor informs them that an unidentified man is hiding in the shadows of their front lawn, staring in at them. The police arrive to arrest the supposed prowler, only to find Herb, quietly observing his family through the windows of his own home. It seems that earlier that day, he received word of a surprise inheritance, left to him by a kind, lonely elderly woman. This sudden gift of a large sum of money prompts Herb to question the meaning and purpose of his own life. He returns to his place in the family with touches of humor, irony and despair.

Wilder's series of short works that captures four important stages of life.

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.

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

Winner! 1938 Pulitzer Prize for DramaIn an important publishing event, Samuel French, in cooperation with the Thornton Wilder estate is pleased to release the playwright''s definitive version of Our Town. This edition of the play differs only slightly from previous acting editions, yet it presents Our Town as Thornton Wilder wished it to be performed. Described by Edward Albee as "...the greatest American play ever written," the story follows the small town

Meet George and Maggie Antrobus of Excelsior, New Jersey, a suburban, commuter-town couple (married for 5,000 years), who bear more than a casual resemblance to that first husband and wife, Adam and Eve: the two Antrobus children, Gladys (perfect in every way, of course) and Henry (who likes to throw rocks and was formerly known as Cain); and their garrulous maid, Sabina (the eternal seductress), who takes it upon herself to break out of character and interrupt the course of the drama at every o

"This play is a rewritten version of the play "The merchant of Yonkers" which was directed in 1938 ..."--P. (4).

A symbolical play about a man named Francis who bears an unspeakable burden of sin and who is now plighted to Lady Poverty-- a crazy woman who once knew a Francis and once was untrue to her husband and bears the marks and symbols of lust.

Walbeck, a thoroughly hated man who cheated hundreds of people out of their money, suddenly returns home from Joliet prison when his sentence is reduced. He is greeted by two people: his attorney, who informs him that Walbeck's wife has fled to California, taking his daughter with her, and a new maid, Bernice, the self-proclaimed "best cook in Chicago" recently hired to keep the home going. Bernice, it turns out, served time for murder, and the advice she gives Walbeck on how to deal with his future allows Wilder to explore the nature of pride. Decisions have to be made quickly when Walbeck learns that his daughter is still in Chicago and coming by to see him at any moment.

Published: c1997, The Wilder Family LLC.