American · b. 1897
Three Pulitzer Prizes (1928, 1938, 1943)
American novelist and playwright who won three Pulitzer Prizes, including for The Bridge of San Luis Rey — the first American novel set in Latin America to win the prize.
Thornton Wilder was born in Madison, Wisconsin in 1897 and was educated at Yale and Princeton. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for The Bridge of San Luis Rey (1927), for Drama for Our Town (1938), and for Drama again for The Skin of Our Teeth (1942) — the only writer to win in both categories.
The Bridge of San Luis Rey was his second novel and his breakthrough: the story of five people who die when a suspension bridge in 18th-century Peru collapses, and a Franciscan monk who investigates their lives to understand whether their deaths were divine plan or pure accident. The novel is set in Lima and the Inca heartland of Peru and draws on Wilder’s extensive reading about Spanish colonial Peru, though he never visited the country.
Wilder was also the author of Our Town, perhaps the most-produced play in American theatrical history. He died in Hamden, Connecticut in 1975.
by Thornton Wilder
In early 20th-century Illinois, a man named John Ashley is convicted of murder and escapes, leaving his family behind. A multigenerational saga about two American families and the question of what it means to be a good person.
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by Thornton Wilder
A novel in documents — letters, journals, and dispatches — reconstructing the final months of Julius Caesar's life, from his point of view and those of everyone around him.
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by Thornton Wilder
On a Friday noon in July 1714, the finest bridge in Peru collapses and sends five travellers to their deaths. Brother Juniper, who witnesses the accident, spends the next six years investigating their lives to determine whether their deaths were divine plan or pure accident.
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by Thornton Wilder
In 1920s Newport, Rhode Island, a young man named Theophilus North arrives to teach tennis and finds himself drawn into the lives of the town's wealthy families — solving problems, righting wrongs, and falling in love.
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by Thornton Wilder
George Brush is a travelling textbook salesman in Depression-era America who is also a fundamentalist Christian — sincere, principled, and a constant source of comic chaos wherever he goes.
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by Thornton Wilder
Set on a small Greek island before the birth of Christ, the novel follows a courtesan named Chrysis whose philosophical wisdom shapes all those around her, and a young man who loves her.
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by Thornton Wilder
Thornton Wilder's debut novel — a young American writer arrives in Rome and is drawn into the orbit of a secretive aristocratic circle whose members may be the old gods of Olympus in disguise.
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All Thornton Wilder novels in order — from The Cabala to Theophilus North. Complete guide to the Pulitzer Prize winner's fiction, with reading order and best starting points.
guide
New to Thornton Wilder? The Bridge of San Luis Rey is the perfect first novel — but this guide explains what to expect and which book suits different types of reader.
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