Synopses & Reviews
Exploring human passion with daring and unflinching honesty, Tennessee Williams forged a poetic theater of raw psychological insight that fused realism and expressionism. Now, in an authoritative two-volume edition, The Library of America collects the plays that reveal a prophetic figure in American life and lettersa writer of generous sympathies and uncompromising frankness who reached wide audiences with plays that revolutionized the themes and styles of the modern theater. This second volume traces Williams's career as it evolved in his adventurous and sometimes shocking later works, including
Orpheus Descending,
Suddenly Last Summer, and
Sweet Bird of Youth, plays that stirred controversy when first produced because of their concern with acts of horrific violence; the satiric marital comedy
Period of Adjustment;
The Night of the Iguana, a moving drama set in Mexico that contains some of Williams's most lyric writing, and
The Eccentricities of a Nightingale, a re-imagining of the earlier
Summer and Smoke.
The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore, with its use of Kabuki-like stylization, began a more experimental phase of Williams's writing, represented here by Kingdom of Earth (also known as The Seven Descents of Myrtle), The Mutilated, Small Craft Warnings, and Out Cry. In late plays such as A Lovely Sunday for Creve Coeur and the autobiographical Vieux Carré, Williams returned to many of his earlier themes and settings.
This edition includes a newly researched chronology of Tennessee Williams's life, explanatory notes (including cast lists of many of the original productions), and an essay on the texts.
About the Author
Tennessee Williams was born in 1911 in Columbus, Mississippi, where his grandfather was the episcopal clergyman. When his father, a travelling salesman, moved with his family to St Louis some years later, both he and his sister found it impossible to settle down to city life. He entered college during the Depression and left after a couple of years to take a clerical job in a shoe company. He stayed there for two years, spending the evening writing. He entered the University of Iowa in 1938 and completed his course, at the same time holding a large number of part-time jobs of great diversity. He received a Rockefeller Fellowship in 1940 for his play Battle of Angels, and he won the Pulitzer Prize in 1948 and 1955. Among his many other plays Penguin have published Summer and Smoke (1948), The Rose Tattoo (1951), Camino Real (1953), Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955), Baby Doll (1957), Orpheus Descending (1957), Something Unspoken (1958), Suddenly Last Summer (1958), Period of Adjustment (1960), The Night of the Iguana (1961), The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore (1963), and Small Craft Warnings (1972). Tennessee Williams died in 1983.
Table of Contents
Plays 1957-1980 Orpheus Descending
Suddenly Last Summer
Sweet Bird of Youth
Period of Adjustment
The Night of the Iguana
The Eccentricities of a Nightingale
The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore
The Mutilated
Kingdom of Earth (The Seven Descents of Myrtle)
Small Craft Warnings
Out Cry
Vieux Carré
A Lovely Sunday for Creve Coeur
Chronology
Note on the Texts
Notes