Thornton Wilder

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Despite the three Pulitzer prizes awarded him, Thornton Wilder may very well [have turned] out to be one of the few enduring writers of our time...There have been countless other authors who in his day have been far more 'discussed.' That was inevitable for a man who has neither hastened to follow nor troubled to oppose the current mode, who has gone his own way, and who has clearly never sought the popularity which has periodically been his (Unger 355).

The key to his significance is his extraordinary ability to combine his philosophy and ethics with his personal experiences in perhaps one of the greatest paradoxical plays ever written.

Thornton Niven Wilder was born in Madison, Wisconsin on the twenty-seventh of April in 1897. His father, Amos Parker Wilder, was a strict Calvinist who combined strong economic interests with politics (Block and Shedd 959) in his work as the editor, owner, and publisher of a newspaper.

Isabella Thornton Niven, his mother, was the daughter of a Presbyterian minister. They were to influence their son's works greatly. Wilder also had a sister, Isabel, who was to become a distinguished novelist in her own right.

Wilder's early education began in Hong Kong, where his father was serving as American consul general in Shanghai (Goldstone 11). He was then schooled at Berkeley, California; Chefoo, China; and Ojai, California before completing high school back at Berkeley in 1915. He studied the classics at Oberlin College and Yale University, where he received his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1919 (Unger 356). Wilder spent a year as a resident of the American Academy at Rome, where he began writing The Cabala. Back in the United States he taught French at Lawrenceville High School in New Jersey from 1921-1928 and began doing graduate work at Princeton, where...