“DEVOTEDLY, THORNTON”: FIRST EDITION OF OUR TOWN INSCRIBED BY WILDER, WITH AN AUTOGRAPH LETTER BY HIM TO “THE FATHER OF INTELLIGENCE ANALYSIS”

WILDER, Thornton. Our Town. A Play in Three Acts. New York: Coward McCann, (1938). Octavo, original brown cloth with blue paper labels, pictorial endpapers, original dust jacket. Housed in a custom clamshell box.

First edition of Wilder’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play, his “most successful and enduring work,” inscribed by the playwright on the title page to the future founder of modern intelligence analysis and his wife, “Beth and Sherman: Devotedly, Thornton. (Book for book, Sherman),” accompanied by a beautiful and warm autograph letter signed to Sherman from Wilder.

Wilder liked to place current events “in long perspective, searching for meaning that transcends daily experience. For Wilder, this search culminated in his most successful and enduring work, Our Town, performed in 1938, when the world again was facing devastation…Wilder explained that he wanted to show ‘the life of a village against the life of the stars.’ His was the right message for the time. Our Town earned Wilder his second Pulitzer Prize” (ANB). Bruccoli & Clark III:367. Schumacher 8. Inscribed to Yale professor of French history and early and influential CIA official Sherman Kent, often hailed as “the father of intelligence analysis” and author of the classic text Strategic Intelligence for American World Policy (1949). The undated autograph letter, written on both sides of a leaf of Wilder’s stationery, reads, in full: “Easter Evening. Dear Sherman: Sure, sure. I almost wept. Now I’m eager to see the bath of ideas you’re going to dip this into. Go to it. It’ll be fine. I’m still all lit up by the fine time the other day. Amos’d love to see these pages—when he comes down some day I’ll borrow them back from you. You have precision—only 1 in a 1000 really cares about that, tho’ it’s the main thing. Ever, Thornton. P.S. The only bathed-in-reflection account of a boyhood I can remember at the moment is Edmund Gosse’s Father and Son. I suppose you know it.” “Amos” likely refers to Amos Niven Wilder, the playwright’s brother; their father was also named Amos. Kent’s owner signature to front free endpaper.

Letter fine. About-fine cloth with light toning, dust jacket about-fine with minute rubbing to spine ends and very light toning to spine. An attractive, very nearly fine inscribed copy.