Book Release: Thornton Wilder: A Life (Paperback)

“Thornton Wilder: A Life brings readers face to face with the extraordinary man who made words come alive around the world, on the stage and on the page.”
—James Earl Jones, actor

“Comprehensive and wisely fashioned….This book is a splendid and long needed work.”
—Edward Albee, playwright

Thornton Wilder: A Life, the first biography of the playwright and novelist since 1983, is based on unprecedented research: thousands of pages of letters, journals, manuscripts, and other documentary evidence of Wilder’s life, work, and times. Biographer Penelope Niven mined Wilder’s personal archives for more than a decade, and has produced a book that illuminates his professional life anew and reveals an enigmatic, intensely private man who wandered the world, writing, he said, for and about everybody. Even today, he has a global audience. His novels, including The Bridge of San Luis Rey, remain in print all over the world. His plays, especially the iconic Our Town and the revolutionary Skin of Our Teeth, are touchstones of modern theater.

Richly detailed, Thornton Wilder: A Life brings one of our country’s most beloved playwrights to center stage and unseals his hidden inner self, apparent only here and there in his art and in his papers.

Visit the HarperCollins listing for Thornton Wilder: A Life for more information.