One Arm

New York. 1948. New Directions. 1st American Edition. Previous Owner's Name Penned in Front, Otherwise Very Good in Worn Dustjacket With tears & Some Small Pieces Missing. 211 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Alvin Lustig. keywords: American Literature Drama. DESCRIPTION - Until now this collection of Tennessee Williams' early fiction has been available only in an expensive limited edition, which was sold out soon after its publication in 1948 and since then has been difficult to obtain at any price in the rare-book market. Although not reviewed then, it established Mr. Williams as a short story writer of the same stature and interest he had shown as a dramatist. Here are all eleven stories of the original volume, republished finally in a trade edition because of an increasingly insistent public demand. One of them, ‘The Yellow Bird,'' is in the revised version Mr. Williams read in his well-known recording. This story of the minister's daughter who found a particularly violent but satisfactory way of expiating a load of inherited puritan guilt bids fair to become a part of American mythology. Each of the stories has qualities that make it memorable. ‘One Arm' itself, about an ex-prize fighter awaiting execution, has its own compassion. ‘The Field of Blue Children' explores the strange ways of the human heart in love. ‘Portrait of a Girl in Glass' is a luminous and nostalgic story about the central characters Williams used in The Class Menagerie, and it reveals something of the way he lives with and works over his material. ‘Desire and the Black Masseur' is an already famous excursion into the logic of the macabre. inventory #20387 Previous Owner's Name Penned in Front, Otherwise Very Good in Worn Dustjacket With tears & Some Small Pieces Missing.…