Tennessee Williams: Plays 1937-1955 (Library of America)

About this book

Tennessee Williamss explosive often violent plays shattered conventional proprieties and transformed the American stage. They inspired some of the most famous productions and performances in theatrical and film history and they continue to grip audiences all over the world. Now in an authoritative two-volume edition The Library of America collects the plays that define Williamss extraordinary range and achievement. This first volume begins with the stunning rediscovered plays of Williamss early career: Spring Storm a tragedy of provincial longing that prefigures the mood and language of his later work and Not About Nightingales a stark prison drama produced in 1998 to international acclaim that resounds with the playwrights outraged idealism. With the autobiographical The Glass Menagerie in 1944 Williams attained what he later called "the catastrophe of success " a success made all the greater by A Streetcar Named Desire his most famous play and one of the most influential works of modern American literature. Forging an idiom that uniquely blended lyricism and brutality a tragic sense of life and a genius for comic observation he continued to revolutionize the American theater with a series of masterpieces: the poignant and melancholy Summer and Smoke the light-hearted erotic comedy The Rose Tattoo the sprawling and surrealistic Camino Real and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof the Pulitzer Prizewinning portrayal of a ruthless family struggle. This volume also contains Battle of Angels (an early version of Orpheus Descending) and a selection of Williamss one-act plays including 27 Wagons Full of Cotton The Property Is Condemned and I Rise in Flame Cried the Phoenix a meditation on the life and work of D. H. Lawrence. This edition includes a newly researched chronology of Tennessee Williamss life explanatory notes (including cast lists of many of the original productions) and an essay on the texts.