Thornton Wilder

Biography

In 1926 Wilder's first novel The Cabala was published. In 1927, The Bridge of San Luis Rey brought him commercial success and his first Pulitzer Prize in 1928. From 1930 to 1937 he taught at the University of Chicago. In 1938 and 1943 he won the Pulitzer Prize for drama for his plays Our Town and The Skin of Our Teeth. World War II saw him rise to the rank of lieutenant colonel in the Army Air Force and receive several awards. He went on to be a visiting professor at the University of Hawaii and to teach poetry at Harvard. Though he considered himself a teacher first and a writer second, he continued to write all his life, receiving the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade in 1957 and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1963. In 1967 he won the National Book Award for his novel The Eighth Day.

He died in his sleep, December 7, 1975 in Hamden, Connecticut, aged 78, where he had been living with his sister, Isabel, for many years.

Wilder had a wide circle of friends and enjoyed mingling with other famous people, including Ernest Hemingway, Willa Cather, Montgomery Clift and Gertrude Stein. Although he never discussed his homosexuality publicly or in his writings, his close friend Samuel M. Steward is generally acknowledged to have been his lover.

Source:
Wikipedia contributors, "Thornton Wilder," Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Thornton Wilder&oldid=104994581 (accessed February 12, 2007). [Read More...]

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