Tennessee Williams: Plays 1957-1980 (Library of America) - Hardcover

Williams, Tennessee

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1883011876 ISBN 13: 9781883011871

Publisher: Library of America, 2000

Synopsis

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 letters—a 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 this title

About the Author:

This volume is edited by Mel Gussow (1933–2005), who was a drama critic, a cultural writer at The New York Times, and author of several books including Edward Albee: A Singular Journey, and by Kenneth Holditch, professor emeritus at the University of New Orleans, editor since 1989 of the Tennessee Williams Journal, and the author of In Old New Orleans.

From Library Journal:

This set collects all of Williams's plays, including the recently rediscovered early efforts Spring Storm and Not About Nightingales up through his most famous works and later lesser-known dramas. These magnificent titles are essential for all academic and public libraries.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Library of America
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 1883011876
• ISBN 13: 9781883011871
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 975
• Editor: Gussow Mel, Holditch Kenneth