The Merchant of Yonkers.

WILDER, Thornton.

Item Number: 97675

New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1939.

First edition, inscribed on the half-title by Wilder in the year of publication, the year after he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Our Town. Octavo, original cloth, pictorial endpapers. Presentation copy, inscribed by the author on the half-title page in the year of publication, “For Elsie Jarman with the best wishes of Thornton Wilder Scarsdale April 24, 1939.” Near fine in a near fine price-clipped dust jacket. Jacket design by Donald McKay.

Wilder’s Merchant of Yonkers premiered in Boston and New York in 1938, the same year his play, Our Town, won the Pulitzer Prize. “Perhaps Wilder’s most popular work,” The Merchant of Yonkers was “his adaptation of one of Nestroy’s farces (Einen Jux will er sich machen, based on A Day Well Spent by John Oxenford). Merchant of Yonkers, later revised by Wilder and titled The Matchmaker, ran “in New York from December 1955 to February 2, 1957… The musical comedy version of the latter—Hello, Dolly!—ran in New York from January 16, 1964, to December 27, 1970” (Selected Letters, 364n). “A spectacular success,” Michael Stewart’s libretto for Hello, Dolly! closely followed Wilder’s comedy (Hartnoll, 892).