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A Play in Three Acts
by Thornton Wilder
Thornton Wilder's Pulitzer Prize-winning drama of life in the mythical village of Grover's Corners, New Hampshire—an allegorical representation of all life—is an American classic. It is the simple story of a love affair that asks timeless questions about the meaning of love, life, and death. This beautiful hardcover edition features an illuminating afterword by Tappan Wilder, Thornton Wilder's nephew, and is the perfect gift for fans of this beloved tale.
Our Town explores the relationship between two young neighbors, George Gibbs and Emily Webb, whose childhood friendship blossoms into romance, and then culminates in marriage. When Emily loses her life during childbirth, the circle of life portrayed in each of the three acts—childhood, adulthood, and death—is fully realized.
Widely considered one of the greatest American plays of all time, Our Town debuted on Broadway in 1938 and continues to be performed daily on stages around the world.
"In Our Town, Wilder cautions us to recognize that life is both precious and ordinary, and that these two fundamental truths are intimately connected." —New York Times
"Wilder's unfashionable insistence on embracing wonders as well as woe is both gallant and exhilarating... . Our Town leaves us with a sense of blessing, and the unspoken but palpable command to achieve gratitude in what remains of our days on earth" —The New Yorker
This information about Our Town was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Thornton Wilder (1897–1975) was an accomplished novelist and playwright whose works, exploring the connection between the commonplace and cosmic dimensions of human experience, continue to be read and produced around the world. The Bridge of San Luis Rey, one of his seven novels, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1928, as did two of his four full-length dramas, Our Town (1938) and The Skin of Our Teeth (1943). The Matchmaker was adapted as the musical Hello, Dolly! Wilder also enjoyed enormous success with many other forms of the written and spoken word, among them teaching, acting, opera, and film, including his classic screenplay for Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt (1943). The writer's many honors include the Gold Medal for Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and the National Book Committee's Medal for Literature.
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