[Rarebooks] FS: SIGNED First Edition of OUR TOWN with a Letter by Thornton Wilder
Charles Agvent
chagvent at ptd.net
Thu Aug 14 10:32:33 EDT 2014
Fromour recent catalog--SUMMER MISCELLANY 2014--with 127 select items,
all new arrivals, in a variety of fields:
http://www.charlesagvent.com/shop/agvent/index.html?id=DLrIinxi&mv_pc=440
WILDER, Thornton. OUR TOWN with an AUTOGRAPH LETTER SIGNED (ALS). New
York: Coward-McCann, Inc., (1938). First Edition. INSCRIBED and SIGNED
by the author on the half-title page: "For Roger Seccombe/with the best
wishes of/Thornton Wilder/New Haven/November/1938." Laid in is a 2-page
AUTOGRAPH LETTER SIGNED (ALS) "Thornton Wilder" written on the recto and
verso of a single sheet of personal stationery addressed to Seccombe and
inserted in a handwritten, postmarked envelope addressed by Wilder to
Roger Seccombe dated 25 October 1941 tipped in at the front endpaper. In
full: "Many thanks for your letter. It is a great pleasure to hear from
any relative or friend of my friend whom I admire so much. I wish I were
in Chicago and could have some talks with your son. However, I rejoined
the faculty this past summer alone, after four years' absence, and do
not foresee when I shall return there again. This is a double
disappointment, because I should also like to ask him many questions
about Antioch -- a place which all teachers watch with such interest. I
have just returned from England where I spent the month of September and
I am very eager -- if all my accumulated work will only permit -- to go
up to Peterboro and tell Mary of all the absorbing and sad and finally
magnificent things I saw there. Tell your son that I hope to see him
some day and never to hesitate to call on me, if he hears that I am in
the vicinity. Sincerely yours, Thornton Wilder." In September of 1941,
Wilder went to England to attend a congress of the International PEN
(Poets, Essayists, and Novelists) Club. The main theme of the congress
was "Literature and the World after the War," but the heart of the issue
was the responsibility of the writer in time of war. Wilder was part of
a vocal group that opposed the president of British PEN, Storm Jameson,
who insisted that members commit themselves exclusively to propaganda
for the Allied cause. (Stein, Gertrude; Wilder; Thornton; Burns, Edward
McNall; Dydo, Ulla E.; Rice, William. THE LETTERS OF GERTRUDE STEIN AND
THORNTON WILDER. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006; page 297). When
not caught up in navigating the politics of PEN, Wilder wrote to
American educational philosopher Robert Maynard Hutchins that his days
in London, "were crowded with inspections of ruins, defense activities,
airplane factories, bomber commands, luncheons, interviews with works,
journalists. Ministers, dinners, writers, and so on" (Wilder, Thornton;
Wilder, Robin G.; Bryer, Jackson R. THE SELECTED LETTERS OF THORNTON
WILDER. New York: Harper Perennial, 2009; page 400). It is perhaps to
this variety of experiences while in London which Wilder refers in this
letter when he says, "I have just returned from England where I spent
the month of September and I am very eager -- if all my accumulated work
will only permit -- to go up to Peterboro and tell Mary of all the
absorbing and sad and finally magnificent things I saw there." Some
sunning to covers. About Very Good, lacking the dustwrapper. The letter
has a crease from folding, otherwise Fine, with envelope. (#017414)
$2,500.00
http://www.charlesagvent.com/shop/agvent/017414.html
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