WORKS BY WILDER (chronological order)
Novels
The Cabala and The Woman of Andros: Two Novels. HarperCollins, 2007; orig. published 1926 and 1930, respectively.
The Bridge of San Luis Rey. HarperCollins, 2003; orig. published 1927.
Heaven’s My Destination. HarperCollins, 2003; orig. published 1935.
The Ides of March. HarperCollins, 2003; orig. published 1948.
The Eighth Day. HarperCollins, 2007; orig. published 1967.
Theophilus North. HarperCollins, 2003; orig. published 1973.
Plays
Our Town. HarperCollins, 2003; premiered 1938.
The Skin of Our Teeth. HarperCollins, 2003; premiered 1942.
The Matchmaker: A Farce in Four Acts. HarperCollins, 2017; premiered 1955. (The Matchmaker premiered as The Merchant of Yonkers in 1938; revised as The Matchmaker 1955)
A Doll’s House by Henrik Ibsen: An Acting Version by Thornton Wilder. Samuel French, 2016; premiered 1938.
Three Plays: Our Town, The Skin of Our Teeth, and The Matchmaker. HarperCollins, 2007; orig. published 1957.
Collections
The Collected Short Plays of Thornton Wilder Volume I. Theatre Communications Group, 1997. (Contains reprint of The Long Christmas Dinner and Other Plays in One Act, 1931.)
The Collected Short Plays of Thornton Wilder Volume II. Theatre Communications Group, 1998. (Contains reprint of The Angel That Troubled the Waters and Other Plays, 1928, and The Alcestiad, 1977).
Thornton Wilder: Collected Plays and Writings on Theater. Library of America, 2007. (Contains all published plays and the previously unpublished screenplay for the Alfred Hitchcock film Shadow of a Doubt, 1943.)
Thornton Wilder: The Bridge of San Luis Rey and Other Novels 1926-1948. Library of America, 2009. (Contains first 5 novels and short stories)
Thornton Wilder: The Eighth Day, Theophilus North, Autobiographical Writings. Library of America, 2012. (Contains last two novels and three autobiographical pieces.)
WORKS ABOUT WILDER (reverse chronological order)
Journal:
Thornton Wilder Journal. Vol. 1 No. 1. 2020.
Monographs, Collections of Articles:
Bryer, Jackson R., Judith P. Hallett, and Edyta K. Oczkowicz, eds. Thornton Wilder in Collaboration: Collected Essays on His Drama and Fiction. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2018.
Bryer, Jackson R. and Lincoln Konkle, eds. Thornton Wilder: New Perspectives. Northwestern University Press, 2013.
Dan, Hansong. To Realize the Universal: A Critical Study of Allegorical Narrative in Thornton Wilder’s Plays and Novels. Peter Lang, 2012.
Wheatley, Christopher. Thornton Wilder and Amos Wilder: Writing Religion in Twentieth-Century America. University of Notre Dame Press, 2012.
Konkle, Lincoln. Thornton Wilder and The Puritan Narrative Tradition. University of Missouri Press, 2006.
Blank, Martin, Dalma Hunyadi Brunauer, David Garrett Izzo. eds. Thornton Wilder: New Essays. West Cornwall, CT: Locust Hill Press, 1999.
Koster, Katie de, ed. Readings on Thornton Wilder. The Greenhaven Literary Companion to American Authors Series. San Diego: Greenhaven Press, 1998.
Smith, Joel A., Ed. Wilder Rediscovered. Brown-Forman Classics in Context Festival. Louisville: Actors Theatre of Louisville, Inc., 1997.
Blank, Martin, ed. Critical Essays on Thornton Wilder. New York: G.K. Hall & Co., 1996.
Lifton, Paul. Vast Encyclopedia: The Theatre of Thornton Wilder. Westport, CT: Greenwood P, 1995.
Haberman, Donald. Our Town: An American Play. Twayne’s Masterwork Studies No. 28. Boston: Twayne, 1989.
Castronovo, David. Thornton Wilder. New York: F. Ungar, 1986.
Wilder, Amos Niven. Thornton Wilder and His Public. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1980.
Williams, Mary Ellen. A Vast Landscape: Time in the Novels of Thornton Wilder. Pocatello: Idaho State UP, 1979.
Burbank, Rex. Thornton Wilder. Rev. ed. New York: Twayne, 1978.
Kuner, Mildred. Thornton Wilder: The Bright and the Dark. New York: Crowell, 1972.
Stresau, Hermann. Thornton Wilder. Trans. Frieda Schutze. New York: F. Ungar, 1971.
Papajewski, Helmut. Thornton Wilder. Trans. John Conway. New York, F. Ungar, 1968.
Haberman, Donald. The Plays of Thornton Wilder. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan UP, 1967.
Goldstein, Malcolm. The Art of Thornton Wilder. Lincoln, NE: U of Nebraska P, 1965.
Biographies:
Niven, Penelope. Thornton Wilder: A Life. New York: HarperCollins, October, 2012.
Harrison, Gilbert A. The Enthusiast: A Life of Thornton Wilder. New Haven: Ticknor & Fields, 1983.
Simon, Linda. Thornton Wilder: His World. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1979.
Goldstone, Richard H. Thornton Wilder: An Intimate Portrait. New York: Saturday Review Press/E. P. Dutton, 1975.
Letters:
The Selected Letters of Thornton Wilder. Robin G. Wilder and Jackson R. Bryer, eds. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2008.
A Tour of the Darkling Plain: The Finnegans Wake Letters of Thornton Wilder and Adaline Glasheen. Edward M. Burns and Joshua A. Gaylord eds. University College Dublin Press, 2001.
The Letters of Gertrude Stein and Thornton Wilder. Edward Burns and Ulla E. Dydo with William Rice, eds. New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 1996.
Interviews:
Conversations with Thornton Wilder. Jackson R. Bryer ed. Jackson & London: University Press of Mississippi, 1992.
Bibliographies:
Walsh, Claudette. Thornton Wilder: A Reference Guide, 1926-1990. New York: G.K. Hall, 1993.
Goldstone, Richard H. and Gary Anderson, Thornton Wilder: An Annotated Bibliography of Works by and about Thornton Wilder. New York: AMS Press, 1982.
Articles in Journals, Chapters in Books: (alphabetical order)
Alder, Henry. “Thornton Wilder’s Theatre.” Horizon 12 (1945): 89-99.
Adler, Thomas P. Mirror On the Stage: The Pulitzer Plays as an Approach to American Drama. West Lafayette, IN: Purdue UP, 1987.
Alter, Mary P. “The Reception of Nestroy in America as exemplified in Thornton Wilder’s play The Matchmaker,” Modern Austrian Literature 20.3-4 (1987): 32-42.
Ballet, Arthur H. “In Our Living and In Our Dying.” English Journal 45 (May 1956): 243-9.
Bennett, Kristin. “The Tragic Heroine: An Intertextual Study of Thornton Wilder’s Women in The Skin of Our Teeth, The Long Christmas Dinner, and Our Town Using Judith Butler’s Gender as Performance.” Intertextuality in American Drama: Critical Essays on Eugene O’Neill, Susan Glaspell, Thornton Wilder, Arthur Miller and Other Playwrights, Drew Eisenhauer and Brenda Murphy, eds. McFarland Press, 2012.
Bigsby, C.W.E. A Critical Introduction to Twentieth-Century American Drama. 3 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1984.
Blank, Martin. “Broadway Production History.” Theatre History Studies 5 (1985): 57-71.
Bogard, Travis. “The Comedy of Thornton Wilder.” in Modern Drama. Eds. Travis Bogard and W. Oliver. New York: Oxford UP, 1965, 355-73; rpt. from Introduction to Three Plays by Thornton Wilder. New York: Harper, 1962.
Broussard, Louis. American Drama: Contemporary Allegory From Eugene O’Neill to Tennessee Williams. Norman: U of Oklahoma P, 1962.
Brown, Edward K. “A Christian Humanist: Thornton Wilder.” University of Toronto Quarterly 4 (1935): 356-70.
Brunauer, Dalma. “Creative Faith in Wilder’s The Eighth Day. Renascence 25 (Autumn 1972): 46-56.
Corrigan, Robert W. “Thornton Wilder and the Tragic Sense of Life.” Educational Theatre Journal 13 (1961): 167-73.
Cowley, Malcolm. Introduction to A Thornton Wilder Trio. New York: Criterion Books, 1956; rpt. from “The Man Who Abolished Time.” Saturday Review 6 Oct. 1956, 13-14, 50-52.
—. “The Wilder Side of Life” in Book World Oct. 21, 1973 p. 5.
Ditsky, John. The Onstage Christ: Studies in the Persistence of a Theme. Totowa, NJ: Barnes & Noble, 1980.
Drukman, Steven. “Wilder Times” in Public Access: The Program of the Public Theater/New York Shakespeare Festival at the Delacorte Theatre. June/July 1998: 11-13.
Dukore, Bernard F. American Dramatists 1918-1945. New York: Grove Press, 1984.
Ellison, Jerome. God On Broadway. Richmond, VA: John Knox P, 1971.
Fergusson, Francis. “Three Allegorists: Brecht, Wilder, and Eliot.” Sewanee Review 64 (1956): 544-73.
Firebaugh, Joseph J. “Farce and the Heavenly Destination.” Four Quarters 16 (1967): 10-17.
—. “The Humanism of Thornton Wilder.” Pacific Spectator 4 (1950): 426-38.
Fuller, Edumnd. “Thornton Wilder: The Notation of the Heart.” American Scholar 28 (1959): 210-17.
Fulton, A.R. “Expressionism–Twenty Years After.” Sewanee Review 52 (1944): 398-413.
Gould, Jean. Modern American Playwrights. New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1966.
Greene, George. “An Ethics for Wagon Trains: Thornton Wilder’s The Eighth Day” in Queen’s Quarterly 88.2 (Summer 1981): 325-35
Gussow, Mel. “Theater View: The Darker Shores of Thornton Wilder.” The New York Times. 11 December 1988, pp. H7, H37.
—. “A Theatrical Vision Endures.” The New York Times. 20 December 1987. Sec 2 p. 36.
Haberman, Donald. “The Americanization of Thornton Wilder.” Four Quarters 16 (1967): 18-27.
Herron, Ima Honaker. The Small Town in American Drama. Dallas: Southern Methodist UP, 1969.
Hewitt, Bernard. “Thornton Wilder Says ‘Yes’.” Tulane Drama Review 4 (1959): 110-20.
Joseph, Keith A. “Grover’s Corners Reinterpreted.” In Transformations: From Literature to Film–Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Film of Kent State University. ed. Douglas Radcliff-Umstead. Kent, OH: Romance Languages Department, Kent State University, pp. 70-4.
Kernan, Michael. “Thornton Wilder: A Wizard, A Magus, A Waver of Wands.” The Washington Post November 18, 1973, K1, K3
Konkle, Lincoln. “Judgment Day in the Jazz Age: American Puritanism in Wilder’s Early Plays and Novels.” in Thornton Wilder: New Essays. Ed. Martin Blank, Dalma Hunyadi Brunauer, David Garrett Izzo. West Cornwall, CT: Locust Hill Press, 1999: 51-91.
—. “Thornton Wilder.” The Dictionary of Literary Biography. Volume 228: Twentieth-Century American Dramatists, Second Series. Ed. Christopher J. Wheatley. Detroit: A Broccoli Clark Layman Book The Gale Group, 2000: 267-88.
—. Book Review of The Collected Short Plays of Thornton Wilder, Vol. I & II. American Drama 8.2 (Spring 1999): 79-82.
Krutch, Joseph Wood. The American Drama Since 1918: An Informal History. New York: George Braziller, Inc., 1957.
Lewis, Allan. “Thornton Wilder and William Saroyan–The Comic Vein and ‘Courage for Survival.’“ in American Plays and Playwrights of the Contemporary Theatre. ed. Allan Lewis. New York: Crown, 1965, 66-80.
Lynen, John F. The Design of the Present: Essays on Time and Form in American Literature. New Haven: Yale UP, 1969.
Maxwell-Mahon, W.D. “The Novels of Thornton Wilder.” UNISA ENGLISH STUDIES journal of the department of english 16.1 (May 1978): 35-44.
Mordden, Ethan. The American Theatre. New York: Oxford UP, 1981.
Morgan, H. Wayne. “The Early Thornton Wilder.” Southwest Review 43 (Summer 1958): 245-53.
“An Obliging Man.” Time. 12 January 1953, 44-9.
Porter, Thomas E. Myth and Modern American Drama. Detroit: Wayne State UP, 1969.
Powers, Lyall H. “Thornton Wilder as Liteary Cubist: An Acknowledged Debt to Henry James.” The Henry James Review 7.1 (Fall 1985): 34-44.
Pradhan, N.S. Modern American Drama: A Study in Myth and Tradition. New Delhi: Arnold-Heinemann, 1978.
Raleigh, John Henry. “The American Quixote: George Brush.” Introduction to Heaven’s My Destination by Thornton Wilder. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1960, pp. 1-16.
Schlueter, Paul. Literature and Religion: Thornton Wilder’s The Eighth Day: Papers Collected for MLA Seminar 4. Evansville, IN: U of Evansville, 1970.
Schroeder, Patricia R. The Presence of the Past in Modern American Drama. Rutherford: Fairleigh Dickinson UP, 1989.
Scott, Winfield Townley. “Our Town and the Golden Veil.” Virginia Quarterly Review 29 (1953): 103-17.
Shunami, Gideon. “Between the Epic and the Absurd: Brecht, Wilder, Durrenmatt, and Ionesco.” Genre 8 (1975): 42-59.
Silver, Nicky. “A Loony Landmark that Inspired a Seventh-Grader.” The New York Times. 28 June, 1998. “Arts and Leisure Desk” pp 5, 12.
Slocum, Bill. “The Legacy of Thornton Wilder.” The New York Times 14 September 1997, 1,4.
Stephens, George D. “Our Town–Great American Tragedy?” Modern Drama 1 (1959): 258-64.
Vivion, Michael. “Thornton Wilder and the Farmer’s Daughter.” Thalia: Studies in Literary Humor 3 (Spring-Summer 1980): 41-5.
Weales, Gerald. “Unfashionable Optimist.” Commonweal 67 (1958): 486-88.
Wheatley, Christopher J. “Thornton Wilder, The Real, and Theatrical Realism.” Realism and the American Dramatic Tradition. Ed. William W. Demastes. Tuscaloosa and London: The U of Alabama P, 1996.
Williams, Michael V. “Errors in Thornton Wilder’s The Eighth Day.” English Language Notes 27.3 (March 1990): 69-72.
Wixson, Douglas C., Jr. “The Dramatic Techniques of Thornton Wilder and Bertolt Brecht: A Study in Comparison.” Modern Drama 15 (1972): 112-24.
Archives:
The major despository of Wilder’s manuscripts, letters, journals, and other papers is the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Yale University.