[Rarebooks] FS: INSCRIBED Thornton Wilder First of OUR TOWN with AUTOGRAPH LETTER SIGNED, price reduced

[Charles Agvent]

Price reduced to $1500 NET

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

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