Editing Thornton Wilder (section)

==Personal life==
Six years after Wilder's death, [[Samuel Steward]] wrote in his autobiography that he had sexual relations with him.<ref>{{cite book | title =The Lost Autobiography of Samuel Steward: Recollections of an Extraordinary Twentieth-Century Gay Life | editor-first =Jeremy | editor-last= Mulderig | location = Chicago | publisher = University of Chicago Press | date =2018 | pages =118–124}}</ref> In 1937, [[Gertrude Stein]] had given Steward, then a college professor, a letter of introduction to Wilder. According to Steward, [[Alice B. Toklas]] told him that Wilder liked him and that Wilder had reported he was having trouble starting the third act of ''Our Town'' until he and Steward walked around Zürich all night in the rain and the next day wrote the whole act, opening with a crowd in a rainy cemetery.<ref>{{cite book |editor-last=Steward |editor-first=Samuel M. |title=Dear Sammy: Letters from Gertrude Stein & Alice B. Toklas |chapter = The Memoir | first = Samuel M. | last = Steward |publisher=[[Houghton Mifflin Harcourt|Houghton Mifflin]] |year=1977 |isbn=0-395-25340-3 |pages= 26, 32}}</ref> [[Penelope Niven]] disputes Steward's claim of a relationship with Wilder and, based on Wilder's correspondence, says Wilder worked on the third act of ''Our Town'' over the course of several months and completed it several months before he first met Steward.<ref>{{cite book |last=Niven |first=Penelope |title=Thornton Wilder: A Life |publisher=[[HarperCollins]] |year=2012 |isbn=978-0-06083-136-3 | pages= 433–437 |url=https://archive.org/details/thorntonwilderli0000nive/page/433 }}</ref> [[Robert Gottlieb]], reviewing Penelope Niven's work in ''[[The New Yorker]]'' in 2013, claimed Wilder had become infatuated with a man, not identified by Gottlieb, and Wilder's feelings were not reciprocated. Gottlieb asserted that "Niven ties herself in knots in her discussion of Wilder's confusing sexuality" and that "His interest in women was unshakably nonsexual." He takes Steward's view that Wilder was a latent homosexual but never comfortable with sex.<ref>{{cite magazine |last1=Gottlieb |first1=Robert |title=Man of Letters |magazine=The New Yorker |date=January 7, 2013 |url=http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/01/07/man-of-letters-5 |access-date=June 17, 2017}}</ref>

Wilder had a wide circle of friends, including writers [[Ernest Hemingway]], [[F. Scott Fitzgerald]], [[Zelda Fitzgerald]], Toklas, [[Jean-Paul Sartre]], and Stein; actress [[Ruth Gordon]]; fighter [[Gene Tunney]]; and socialite [[Sibyl, Lady Colefax]].<ref name=NYT/>

From the earnings of ''The Bridge of San Luis Rey'', in 1930 Wilder had a house built for his family in [[Hamden, Connecticut]], designed by [[Alice Trythall Washburn]], one of the few female architects working at the time. His sister Isabel lived there for the rest of her life. This became his home base, although he traveled extensively and lived away for significant periods.