As the winner of three Pulitzer Prizes for his writing, playwright and novelist Thornton Wilder '20 often received mail from fans and admirers. After reading the play "Our Town," for example, Albert Einstein wrote a letter to Wilder in which he compared the work to Homer's "Odyssey" and Shakespeare's "Hamlet." Einstein added, "That an American of the present day can create with such delicacy and detachment touches the soul like a miracle." After his signature, Einstein added the description "mathematical physicist" as a way of identifying himself.
Einstein's handwritten note to Wilder is among the items on display in a major exhibition at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library honoring the writer's life and works. Drawing on Yale's vast Wilder archive, "Thornton Wilder: A Centennial Celebration" features books, autograph manuscripts, correspondence and such memorabilia as photographs, playbills and posters. It will be on view until Sept. 20.
In addition to Einstein, other famous figures whose letters to Wilder are featured in the exhibit include Willa Cather (who tells Wilder that "Our Town" is "the loveliest thing that has been produced in this country in a long, long time -- and the truest"), Jean Paul Sartre, Gertrude Stein, H.D. and Paul Hindemith (whom Wilder met at Yale in the 1950s and who wrote the music for Wilder's adaptation of his own play "The Long Christmas Dinner").
Wilder's three Pulitzer Prize-winning works -- "The Bridge of San Luis Rey" (1927), "Our Town" (1938) and "The Skin of Our Teeth" (1943) -- as well as his best-selling novel "The Eighth Day" (1967), are represented in the exhibition by his notes and manuscripts, editions, playbills, literary sources, reviews and letters, in which the author comments on his own work. In a letter to his brother Amos, for instance, Wilder describes "The Eighth Day" as being like "'Little Women' as tho' it were written by Dostoyevsky."
The exhibition also presents a full range of materials relating to Wilder's lesser known works, including his play "The Merchant of Yonkers," which in 1954 was reworked as "The Matchmaker," the basis for the hit musical "Hello, Dolly!"
Wilder, who graduated from Yale College in 1920, had a connection to the University throughout his life, and there are items interspersed in the various display cases that reveal the writer's ties to his alma mater, notes Dwight Zscheile, a Divinity School student who assisted in the preparation of the exhibit with Patricia C. Willis, the Elizabeth Wakeman Dwight Curator of the Collection of American Literature. Recent Divinity School graduate Maria Malkiewicz also assisted Ms. Willis in organizing the exhibit.
"Wilder came from a family of Yale people -- his father earned his B.A. in 1884 and his Ph.D. in 1892 and later served as treasurer and executive secretary of Yale-in-China," says Mr. Zscheile. "His brother, Amos Niven Wilder, received his B.A., B.D. and Ph.D. from Yale, as well as an honorary D.D., and served on the Yale Corporation. Amos' first volume of poems, "Battle-Retrospect," was a Yale Series of Younger Poets selection in 1923."
In addition, one of Thornton's three sisters, Isabel, studied at the Yale School of Drama, notes Mr. Zscheile. An entire display case is devoted to Wilder's family members, showcasing their various books, poetry and photographs, among other items.
As a student at Yale, Wilder contributed to the Yale Literary Magazine, frequented the Elizabethan Club and won the Bradford Brinton Award for his four-act drama "The Trumpet Shall Sound." After winning his first Pulitzer for "The Bridge of San Luis Rey" in 1928, Wilder built a house in Hamden, Connecticut, and "for the rest of his life could be seen on the Yale campus, dining at the Graduate Club or using the Music Library," Mr. Zscheile says.
On Sept. 18, during the final week of the exhibition, the Beinecke Library will sponsor a conference on Thornton Wilder. Playwrights Edward Albee, John Guare and A. R. Gurney will be present for a roundtable discussion of Wilder in the American theater, and there will also be readings from Wilder's works and presentations by scholars from the United States and Russia. More information on the conference will be announced in a future issue of the Yale Bulletin & Calendar. Further information can also be obtained by calling 432-2962.
The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, located at 121 Wall St., is open for exhibition viewing Monday-Friday, 8:30 a.m.-5 p.m., and on Saturdays in July and September, 10 a.m.-5 p.m. The library will be closed on Monday, Sept. 1 (Labor Day).