The Ides of March
The ides of March or March 15th was a day of religious celebrations in ancient Rome and notoriously the date of the assassination of Julius Caesar.
In our Rare Book Room we have a copy of Thornton Wilder’s The Ides of March, a novel about Caesar told through imaginary letters and documents cleverly revealing what Caesar the man may have been like. This copy is part of The William Dew Gresham Collection. Mr. Gresham collected signed copies of great books. This copy is signed by Mr. Wilder to Mr. Gresham in 1951.
The Ides of March was published in 1948, ten years after Wilder’s Pulitzer Prize winning play, Our Town. (His The Skin of Our Teeth won the 1943 Pulitzer.) He wrote seven novels, including The Bridge of San Luis Rey which won the Pulitzer in 1928. His play The Matchmaker ran on Broadway for 486 performances from 1955-1957. It may be more familiar as it’s musical adaptation, Hello Dolly!
Wilder was enormously successful in many different genres including translation, acting, opera librettos, lecturing, teaching, and film (he wrote the screenplay for Alfred Hitchcock’s 1943 psycho-thriller, Shadow of a Doubt.) His many honors include the Gold Medal for Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and the National Book Committee’s Medal for Literature. On April 7, 1997, what would have been his 100th birthday, the US Postal Service unveiled the Thornton Wilder 32 cent stamp.