Books and Articles about Wilder's Works
The following list is a selective bibliography of books and articles written by Wilder scholars about his plays, novels, and Wilder himself. For a more comprehensive list of sources (including reviews, interviews,
and non-academic articles in magazines), see Walsh's annotated bibliography.
Letters:
The Letters of Gertrude Stein and Thornton Wilder, edited by Edward Burns and Ulla E. Dydo with William Rice (New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 1996).
Interviews:
Conversations with Thornton Wilder, edited by Jackson R. Bryer (Jackson & London: University Press of Mississippi, 1992).
Bibliographies:
Richard H. Goldstone and Gary Anderson, Thornton Wilder: An Annotated Bibliography of Works by and about Thornton Wilder (New York: AMS Press, 1982);
Claudette Walsh, Thornton Wilder: A Reference Guide, 1926-1990 (New York: G.K. Hall, 1993).
Biographies:
Richard H. Goldstone, Thornton Wilder: An Intimate Portrait (New York: Saturday Review Press/E. P. Dutton, 1975);
Linda Simon, Thornton Wilder: His World (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1979);
Gilbert A. Harrison, The Enthusiast: A Life of Thornton Wilder (New Haven: Ticknor & Fields, 1983).
Books, Articles in Journals, Chapters in Books:
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,"
Ballet, Arthur H. "In Our Living and In Our Dying." English Journal 45 (May 1956): 243-9.
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.
---. Critical Essays on Thornton Wilder. New York: G.K. Hall & Co., 1996.
Blank, Martin, Dalma Hunyadi Brunauer, David Garrett Izzo. Eds. Thornton Wilder: New Essays. West Cornwall, CT: Locust Hill Press, 1999.
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.
Burbank, Rex. Thornton Wilder. Rev. ed. New York: Twayne, 1978.
Castronovo, David. Thornton Wilder. New York: F. Ungar, 1986.
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.
Goldstein, Malcolm. The Art of Thornton Wilder. Lincoln, NE: U of Nebraska P, 1965.
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 Plays of Thornton Wilder. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan UP, 1967.
---. Our Town: An American Play. Twayne's Masterwork Studies No. 28. Boston: Twayne, 1989.
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. Errand into the Theatrical Wilderness: the Puritan Narrative Tradition in the Plays of Wilder, Williams, and Albee. Diss. U of Wisconsin-Madison. Ann Arbor: UMI, 1991. 3391495.
---. "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.
Koster, Katie de, ed. Readings on Thornton Wilder. The Greenhaven Liteary Companion to American Authors Series. San Diego: Greenhaven Press, 1998.
Krutch, Joseph Wood. The American Drama Since 1918: An Informal History. New York: George Braziller, Inc., 1957.
Kuner, Mildred. Thornton Wilder: The Bright and the Dark. New York: Crowell, 1972.
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.
Lifton, Paul. Vast Encyclopedia: The Theatre of Thornton Wilder. Westport, CT: Greenwood P, 1995.
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.
Papajewski, Helmut. Thornton Wilder. Trans. John Conway. New York, F. Ungar, 1968.
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.
Smith, Joel A., Ed. Wilder Rediscovered. Brown-Forman Classics in Context Festival. Louisville: Actors Theatre of Louisville, Inc., 1997.
Stephens, George D. "Our Town--Great American Tragedy?" Modern Drama 1 (1959): 258-64.
Stresau, Hermann. Thornton Wilder. Trans. Frieda Schutze. New York: F. Ungar, 1971.
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.
Wilder, Amos Niven. Thornton Wilder and His Public. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1980.
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.
Papers:
The major despository of Wilder's manuscripts, letters, journals, and other papers is the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Yale University.
©2003 Thornton Wilder Society