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On the strength of only three full-length plays and a bare handful of one-acts, Thornton Wilder ranks among the top half dozen playwrights in the history of American theater. The modest volume of his dramatic work is not the result of a limitation of talent or interest; rather, it is due to his abilities and inclinations being multifocused, without becoming diffused. His career is marked with superior achievement in three fields: academics, fiction, and drama. Beginning as a schoolmaster for young boys, he eventually held the Charles Eliot Norton Professorship of Poetry at Harvard. His fiction was rewarded with both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. In the field of drama, Our Town (1938) not only won the Pulitzer Prize but also has become the best-known and most-produced play in the United States. The Skin of Our Teeth (1942), another Pulitzer Prize winner, expanded Wilder's reputation to international status; the play continues to be held in high esteem in both the United States and Europe, particularly in Germany.
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