Thornton Wilder: The Eighth Day, Theophilus North, Autobiographical Writings (LOA #224)

“The best thing he ever wrote,” observed Edmund Wilson of Thornton Wilder’s National Book Award winner The Eighth Day (1967), an enthralling novel that shows Wilder revisiting the small-town America of Our Town to fashion a philosophical whodunit. A wrongful conviction for murder and a daring rescue lead to a meditation on justice, destiny, and “the impassioned will,” for which “nothing is impossible.” Wilder’s last novel, the semi-autobiographical Theophilus North (1973), is an affectionate portrait of Newport, Rhode Island, in the 1920s and a playful, valedictory glance at Wilder’s young manhood. Completing this volume are three never-before- published reminiscences taken from an unfinished autobiography in which Wilder engagingly recalls his childhood stay at a boarding school in China, his time as an undergraduate at Yale, and the uneasy experience of visiting Salzburg not long before Austria was annexed by the Nazis.

LIBRARY OF AMERICA is an independent nonprofit cultural organization founded in 1979 to preserve our nation’s literary heritage by publishing, and keeping permanently in print, America’s best and most significant writing. The Library of America series includes more than 300 volumes to date, authoritative editions that average 1,000 pages in length, feature cloth covers, sewn bindings, and ribbon markers, and are printed on premium acid-free paper that will last for centuries.