Play· 1938· Drama

Our Town

by Thornton Wilder

Our Town: 1 recorded work traces back to it.

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What Our Town influenced

Works that record this one as a source, with the evidence a contributor gave.

Tom Lake

Book · 2023

InfluenceHIGH

Ann Patchett built the novel around Our Town: Lara met her old love while playing Emily in a summer-stock production, and Wilder's play about ordinary life and loss shapes the story she tells her daughters.

About the work

Our Town

A Stage Manager narrates life in the small New Hampshire town of Grover's Corners between 1901 and 1913: the Gibbs and Webb families, the love and marriage of George and Emily, and Emily's death, after which she returns to relive one ordinary day.