TAPPAN WILDER
Tappan is Thornton Wilder's nephew and has served for twenty-five years as his literary executor. He plays a similar role for the literary legacies of Wilder's three sisters and brother, all of whom were also authors. He speaks widely about his uncle’s life, work and family.
As literary executor of Thornton Wilder’s works, Tappan has overseen a major re-issue of Wilder’s seven novels and major plays, published by HarperCollins. For each work, he contributed Afterwords containing an overview, brief history of the work and several selected readings. With the late Donald Gallup, he compiled and edited TCG’s two-volume edition of Thornton Wilder short plays. Working with Rosey Strub, Manager of Wilder’s works, Tappan revisited all of Wilder’s Samuel French acting editions. The resulting editions feature textual corrections, updated stage directions and special notes. This muti-year project included the 2012 release of the definitive acting edition of Our Town. Tappan has also overseen Wipf & Stock's re-publication of seventeen of Amos Niven Wilder’s works covering the fields of New Testament studies, literature and religion, literary criticism and poetry.
Tappan also selected and worked closely with Penelope Niven, author of Thornton Wilder: A Life (2013); and J.D. McClatchy, editor of the Library of America’s three volumes devoted to Thornton Wilder’s drama and fiction (2007, 2009, 2011), and Robin G. Wilder and Jackson R. Bryer, editors of The Selected Letters of Thornton Wilder (2008). These foundational works for understanding Thornton Wilder’s work, life and family utilized extensive Wilder family archival materials never before available to researchers.
Tappan is also responsible for adding four heretofore unpublished one-act plays and four playlets to the public record, and opening the door for several subsidiary works based on Wilder drama and fiction, including: the Our Town opera (libretto by J.D. McClatchy, score by Ned Rorem); his adaptation of George Farquhar’s The Beaux’ Stratagem (begun by Wilder in 1939 and completed by Ken Ludwig in 2006); and stage adaptations of the novels Theophilus North and The Bridge of San Luis Rey by, respectively, playwrights Matthew Burnett and David Greenspan. In 2016 he arranged the first publication of Wilder’s Broadway record-breaking translation of A Doll’s House published in trade edition by TCG Press and an acting edition by Samuel French. He is currently researching Wilder’s non-fiction, his record as lecturer and teacher, and the history of his uncle’s one-act plays.
Tappan was born in 1940 and raised in Chicago and the Boston area. He is a graduate of Yale College (1962) and holds an MA in American history from the University of Wisconsin (Madison) and a M. Phil in American Studies from Yale. In 1962-3 he was the recipient of a Rockefeller Brothers Fellowship in Theological Education taken at Union Theological Seminary (NYC). He held administrative positions at Yale for fifteen years, before moving to Washington, DC to work principally in the urban and heath care fields. He has lived in Northern California since 2016.
Tappan is the Honorary Chair of The Thornton Wilder Society, a member of PEN (American Center) and the National Council of Graywolf Press. He is an honorary trustee of Long Wharf Theatre in New Haven and a former Trustee of the Yale Library Associates. Whenever possible he escapes to Maine, home of his daughter, Jenney, and granddaughter Niven.