Thornton Wilder 1997 Stamp & The Ides of March

The Thornton Wilder 1997 Stamp along his book, The Ides of March is today’s March 15th blog post.

This is the same Thornton Wilder whose three-act play of everyday life in American small town Grover’s Corners I recall reading in High School.

In The Tragedy of Julius Caesar by Shakespeare in Act I, Scene 2 it contains the famous quote with the Soothsayer:
“Beware the ides of March.”

The book published in 1948 uses imagined letters and documents putting together his epistolary novel set in Julius Caesar’s Rome.

The Ides of March Thornton Wilder bookThe Ides of March Thornton Wilder book

At the Thornton Wilder Society website their coverage of The Ides of March novel by Thornton Wilder Plot Summary includes sharing how the documents are arranged into four books.    And from Wikipedia – “The Ides of March is an epistolary novel by Thornton Wilder that was published in 1948. It is, in the author’s words, ‘a fantasia on certain events and persons of the last days of the Roman republic… Historical reconstruction is not among the primary aims of this work’. The novel deals with the characters and events leading to, and culminating in, the assassination of Julius Caesar.”

This novel is one I’m ordering and will be making the time to read it.  I’m going to have to find out if he includes from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar the famous three words of  “Et tu, Brute?”

Thornton Wilder U.S. Stamp

The image shown today is of the Thornton Wilder 1997 Stamp. The 1997 32 cent Thornton Wilder U.S. Stamp is part of the Literary Art Series. The stamp honoring the 100th anniversary of his birth and having won Pulitzer Prizes for two plays, and one novel.

If you look at the image of the Thornton Wilder U.S. Stamp shown here –  “The background comes from the artist’s imagination of a scene from “Our Town,” one of Wilder’s most well known works.”

Join me tomorrow for my Wednesday blog post here at Anchored Scraps!

Anchors Aweigh,  

Helen


Thornton Wilder 1997 Stamp Attribution & Thank you to the following who are referenced today — 

Image above cover The Ides of March from The Thornton Wilder Society web site

OpenSource Shakespeare The Tragedy of Julius Caesar

Image above upper left U.S. Stamp 32 cent Thornton Wilder as shown on MysticStamp.com “…His sensitive drama about life and death in a New England town, Our Town(1938), is considered his masterpiece. And his 1938 farce The Merchant of Yonkers, was later adapted into the immensely successful musical Hello Dolly! Wilder received Pulitzer Prizes in 1928 for his novel The Bridge of San Luis Rey and in 1938 and 1943 for the plays Our Town and The Skin of Our Teeth, making him one of the few writers to have the distinctive honor of receiving Pulitzers in both fields.”  

1997 Literary Arts Series: Thornton Wilder Issue US Postal Museum web site

Et tu, Brute? Shakespeare Quotes on enotes web site


You may also enjoy reading from AnchoredScraps Henry V & 600th Anniversary Battle of Agincourt 10-25-2015.

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