First reported by bsky
Lost Thornton Wilder Play "The Emporium" Discovered at Yale's Beinecke Library
Lost Thornton Wilder Play "The Emporium" Rediscovered at Yale's Beinecke Library
By
Jesse Green
4d ago· 2 min readenNews
55/100
Doughy
Bagelometer↗
A bagel-shaped object. The form is there, the soul isn't.
Score55TypenewsSentimentpositive
Summary
The article recounts the mysterious disappearance of Thornton Wilder's final play, "The Emporium," which failed to open on Broadway in 1954 and was thought lost. Decades later, in October 2018, a researcher at Yale's Beinecke Library discovered archival boxes containing the manuscript, buried among the library's vast collections. The piece explores the rediscovery of this lost work and the quest to find it.
Key quotes
· 3 pulledThe dead lie still amid the devotional hush of the marble-walled Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University.
Here in a glass coffin, a Gutenberg Bible. Here, the (fake) Vinland map of 15th-century America. Here, cuneiform tablets from Mesopotamia.
In such a mausoleum you would not expect anything to awaken.
Decades after “The Emporium” failed to open on Broadway in 1954, one man went on a quest to find it.
