The back matter for this volume in the original and revised form is constructed in large part from Thornton Wilder’s words found in unpublished material or publications hard to come by. My hope is that readers will find this approach brings Heaven’s My Destination (HMD) and its author into view in a special, even personal way.
A definitive biography and formal treatment of Wilder’s letters remained unpublished when HarperCollins first reprinted the novel in 2003. However, both works exist today. It is thus a pleasure to refer readers interested in Thornton Wilder’s life, work, and family to these foundational works: Robin G. Wilder and Jackson R. Bryer, eds. Selected Letters of Thornton Wilder (HarperCollins, 2008) and Penelope Niven’s Thornton Wilder: A Biography (HarperCollins, 2012). Intrigued by the religious elements in HMD, readers are directed to Christopher Wheatley’s Thornton Wilder & Amos Wilder: Writing Religion in Twentieth Century America (University of Notre Dame Press, 2011) and Amos N. Wilder’s Thornton Wilder and His Public (1980/Wipf & Stock reprint 2017). Those similarly interested in his use of classical material, a subject of growing interest among Wilder scholars, can consult the information and titles found through the HMD page on www.thorntonwilder.com. Additional material can be found on the Thornton Wilder Society website, www.ThorntonWilderSociety.org.
Amos N. Wilder’s epigraph is taken from “Don Quixote in the American Scene,” Anglican Theological Review, Vol. XXV. No.1, (July 1943), p. 212. George Brush Irregular quotations are found as follows: A.R. Gurney, “Introduction,” The Collected Short Plays of Thornton Wilder (TCG Press, New York, 1998) p. xviii; John Henry Raleigh, “Introduction” to HMD, Anchor Books (Garden City, 1960), p. 2; John Knowles, “A Protest from Paradise,” Art and the Craftsman: The Best of the Yale Literary Magazine 1836–1961 (Southern Illinois University, Carbondale), p.203; John Bankham, “Thornton Wilder Visits the Past,” Review of Theophilus North, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Nov. 18, 1973; Michael Schmidt, “Introduction” to HMD (Apollo/Head of Zeus, Ltd., London, 2016), p. ix. William H. Willimon edited And the Laugh Shall Come First: A Treasury of Religious Humor (Abington Press, Nashville. 1961) with the quotation cited found on p. 101. Wilder’s observation of George Brush as “a remote cousin of Don Quixote” is taken from his letter to Norman W. Drey, held by the Manuscripts Department of the University of Virginia.
With the exception of Thornton Wilder’s correspondence with Lady Sibyl Colefax, all excerpts quoted are found from unpublished correspondence, manuscripts, and related records and ephemera held by the Wilder family or drawn from the Wilder Family Archives, Yale Collection of American literature (YCAL) housed in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library in New Haven, Connecticut. This material is published with the permission of the Wilder Family LLC. Spelling errors have been silently corrected unless otherwise noted. The Colefax letters are found in the Thornton Wilder Collection, Fales Manuscripts, Fales Library, New York University, and Marvin J. Taylor’s assistance is acknowledged. In addition to Daniel Aaron’s views expressed in Writers on the Left: Episodes in American Literary Communism, the Overview cites his opinion found in “Morley Callaghan and the Great Depression,” David Staines, ed., The Callagham Symposium (Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 1981), p. 15. Data covering Wilder’s lectures for Lee Keedick is drawn from the literary executor’s personal collection supplemented by research in the records of University of Chicago held in The Joseph Rogenstein Library. The research assistance there of Naomi Scharlin is gratefully recognized.
Mollie Herrick’s syndicated “Hollywood Highlights” column appeared originally on 13 September 1934 through the North American Newspaper Alliance. It is reproduced from “Joan of Arc: Treatment for Motion Picture,” Introduction by A. Tappan Wilder (The Yale Review, Vol. 81, No. 4, October 2003), p. 4. The cited letters, photographs, handwritten samples of mss, and list of projects are found in the Wilder Family Archives, YCAL, and published with permission of The Wilder Family LLC. The reading from Amos. N. Wilder’s Thornton Wilder and His Public appears on pp. 49–51 and a reprint of his father’s “Human Interest” editorial on pp. 51–52.
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For their invaluable work on this publication I am deeply indebted to three gifted and committed professionals: Barbara Hogenson, Wilder’s literary agent, Rosey Strub, manager of his intellectual property, and Jennifer Civiletto, his editor at HarperCollins. This team makes literary executorship a pleasure to practice—and I thank them many times over. We all regret that Sandy McClatchy could not be with us to celebrate this new chapter in the story of George Brush who said of himself, “I’m not the usual kind of traveling salesman.”