[Rarebooks] FS: SIGNED First Edition of OUR TOWN with a Handwritten Letter by Thornton Wilder

[Charles Agvent]

WILDER, Thornton. OUR TOWN with an AUTOGRAPH LETTER SIGNED (ALS). New 
York: Coward-McCann, Inc., (1938). First Edition. Winner of the Pulitzer 
Prize for Drama and a touchstone of American theater. 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)        $2,000

https://www.charlesagvent.com/pages/books/017414/thornton-wilder/our-town-with-an-autograph-letter-signed-als

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