No play in the modern theatre has so captured the imagination and heart of the American public as Tennessee Williams's The Glass Menagerie. Menagerie was Williams's first popular success and launched the brilliant, if somewhat controversial, career of our pre-eminent lyric playwright. Since its premiere in Chicago in 1944, with the legendary Laurette Taylor in the role of Amanda, the play has been the bravura piece for great actresses from Jessica Tandy to Joanne Woodward, and is studied and performed in classrooms and theatres around the world. The Glass Menagerie (in the reading text the author preferred) is now available only in its New Directions Paperbook edition. A new introduction by prominent Williams scholar Robert Bray, editor of The Tennessee Williams Annual Review, reappraises the play more than half a century after it won the New York Drama Critics Circle Award: "More than fifty years after telling his story of a family whose lives form a triangle of quiet desperation, Williams's mellifluous voice still resonates deeply and universally." This edition of The Glass Menagerie also includes Williams's essay on the impact of sudden fame on a struggling writer, "The Catastrophe of Success," as well as a short section of Williams's own "Production Notes." The cover features the classic line drawing by Alvin Lustig, originally done for the 1949 New Directions edition.

在线阅读本书
SET IN ST LOUIS DURING THE DEPRESSION, THE GLASS MENAGERIE IS ONE OF TENNESSEE WILLIAMS' MOST POWERFUL AND MOVING PLAYS. ABANDONED BY HER HUSBAND WHEN HE 'FELL IN LOVE WITH LONG DISTANCES', AMANDA WINGFIELD COMFORTS HERSELF WITH RECOLLECTIONS OF HER EARLIER, MORE GRACIOUS, LIFE IN BLUE MOUNTAIN WHEN SHE WAS PURSUED BY 'GENTLEMAN CALLERS'. HER SON TOM, A POET WITH A JOB IN A WAREHOUSE, LONGS FOR ADVENTURE AND ESCAPE FROM HIS MOTHER'S SUFFOCATING EMBRACE. LAURA, HER SHY CRIPPLED DAUGHTER, HAS HER GLASS MENAGERIE AND HER MEMORIES. AMANDA IS DESPERATE TO FIND HER DAUGHTER A HUSBAND, BUT WHEN THE LONG-AWAITED GENTLEMAN CALLER DOES ARRIVE, LAURA'S ROMANTIC ILLUSIONS ARE FINALLY CRUSHED. MIRRORING THE QUIET DESPAIR OF THE THIRTIES, THE GLASS MENAGERIE IN ITS NOSTALGIA FOR A PAST WORLD AND ITS EVOCATION OF LONELINESS AND LOST LOVE CELEBRATES, ABOVE ALL, THE HUMAN NEED TO DREAM.

Published in 1949 by John Lehman. Very good copy in a very good dust jacket with slight wear. There are mino r foxing, nicks, and wear to the dust jacket, with an ink inscription. The basis of the 1951 film (winner of three Academy Awards) starring Marlon Brando, Vivien Leigh, Kim Hunter, and Karl Malden, Williams's play is one of the works by which 20th-century America defines itself. First English edition of this landmark, Pulitzer-Prize-winning play, featuring Williams's riveting creations.
From The Merriam-Webster Encyclopedia of Literature
Play in three acts by Tennessee Williams, first produced and published in 1947 and winner of the Pulitzer Prize for drama for that year. One of the most admired plays of its time, it concerns the mental and moral disintegration and ultimate ruin of Blanche DuBois, a former Southern belle. Her neurotic, genteel pretensions are no match for the harsh realities symbolized by her brutish brother-in-law, Stanley Kowalski.

The definitive text of this American classic—reissued with an introduction by Edward Albee ( Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and A Delicate Balance ) and Williams' essay "Person-to-Person." Cat on a Hot Tin Roof first heated up Broadway in 1955 with its gothic American story of brothers vying for their dying father's inheritance amid a whirlwind of sexuality, untethered in the person of Maggie the Cat. The play also daringly showcased the burden of sexuality repressed in the agony of her husband, Brick Pollitt. In spite of the public controversy Cat stirred up, it was awarded the Pulitzer Prize and the Drama Critics Circle Award for that year. Williams, as he so often did with his plays, rewrote Cat on a Hot Tin Roof for many years—the present version was originally produced at the American Shakespeare Festival in 1974 with all the changes that made Williams finally declare the text to be definitive, and was most recently produced on Broadway in the 2003-04 season. This definitive edition also includes Williams' essay "Person-to-Person," Williams' notes on the various endings, and a short chronology of the author's life. One of America's greatest living playwrights, as well as a friend and colleague of Williams, Edward Albee has written a concise introduction to the play from a playwright's perspective, examining the candor, sensuality, power, and impact of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof then and now.

When "Memoirs" was first published in 1975, it created quite a bit of turbulence in the media - though long self-identified as a gay man, Williams' candour about his love life, sexual encounters, and drug use was found shocking in and of itself, and such revelations by America's greatest living playwright were called "a raw display of private life" by "The New York Times Book Review". As it turns out, more than thirty years later, Williams' look back at his life is not quite so scandalous as it once seemed; he recalls his childhood in Mississippi and St. Louis, his prolonged struggle as a "starving artist," the "overnight" success of "The Glass Menagerie" in 1945, the death of his long-time companion Frank Merlo in 1962, and his confinement to a psychiatric ward in 1969 and subsequent recovery from alcohol and drug addiction, all with the same directness, compassion, and insight that epitomize his plays.

For the "old crocodile," as Williams called himself late in life, the past was always present, and so it is with his continual shifting and intermingling of times, places, and memories as he weaves this story. When Memoirs was first published in 1975, it created quite a bit of turbulence in the mediathough long self-identified as a gay man, Williams' candor about his love life, sexual encounters, and drug use was found shocking in and of itself, and such revelations by America's greatest living playwright were called "a raw display of private life" by The New York Times Book Review . As it turns out, thirty years later, Williams' look back at his life is not quite so scandalous as it once seemed; he recalls his childhood in Mississippi and St. Louis, his prolonged struggle as a "starving artist," the "overnight" success of The Glass Menagerie in 1945, the death of his long-time companion Frank Merlo in 1962, and his confinement to a psychiatric ward in 1969 and subsequent recovery from alcohol and drug addiction, all with the same directness, compassion, and insight that epitomize his plays.
And, of course, Memoirs is filled with Williams' amazing friends from the worlds of stage, screen, and literature as heoften hilariously, sometimes fondly, sometimes notremembers them: Laurette Taylor, Gore Vidal, Truman Capote, Elia Kazan, Marlon Brando, Vivian Leigh, Carson McCullers, Anna Magnani, Greta Garbo, Elizabeth Taylor, and Tallulah Bankhead to name a few. And now film director John Waters, well acquainted with shocking the American public, has written an introduction that gives some perspective on the various reactions to Tennessee's Memoirs , while also paying tribute to a fellow artist who inspired many with his integrity and endurance.

Williams's Pulitzer Prize-winning play has captured both stage and film audiences since its debut in 1954. One of his best-loved and most famous plays, it exposes the lies plaguing the family of a wealthy Southern planter of humble origins.

Abandoned by her husband, Amanda Wingfield comforts herself with recollections of her earlier, more gracious life in Blue Mountain when she was pursued by 'gentleman callers'. Her son Tom, a poet with a job in a warehouse, longs for adventure and escape from his mother's suffocating embrace, while Laura, her shy crippled daughter, has her glass menagerie and her memories. Amanda is desperate to find her daughter a husband, but when the long-awaited gentleman caller does arrive, Laura's romantic illusions are crushed.

A sizzling drama of desire, avarice and deception set in the American Deep South, Tennessee Williams's Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is publish ed in Penguin Modern Classics.'Big Daddy' Pollitt, the richest cotton planter in the Mississippi Delta, is about to celebrate his sixty-fifth birthday. His two sons have returned home for the occasion: Gooper, his wife and children, Brick, an ageing football hero who has turned to drink, and his feisty wife Maggie. As the hot summer evening unfolds, the veneer of happy family life and Southern gentility gradually slips away as unpleasant truths emerge and greed, lies, jealousy and suppressed sexuality threaten to reach boiling point. Made into a film starring Elizabeth Taylor and Paul Newman, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is a masterly portrayal of family tensions and individuals trapped in prisons of their own making.

The Pulitzer Prize and Drama Critics Circle Award winning play—reissued with an introduction by Arthur Miller ( Death of a Salesman and The Crucible ), and Williams' essay "The World I Live In." It is a very short list of 20th-century American plays that continue to have the same power and impact as when they first appeared—57 years after its Broadway premiere, Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire is one of those plays. The story famously recounts how the faded and promiscuous Blanche DuBois is pushed over the edge by her sexy and brutal brother-in-law, Stanley Kowalski. Streetcar launched the careers of Marlon Brando, Jessica Tandy, Kim Hunter and Karl Malden, and solidified the position of Tennessee Williams as one of the most important young playwrights of his generation, as well as that of Elia Kazan as the greatest American stage director of the '40s and '50s. Who better than America's elder statesman of the theater, Williams' contemporary Arthur Miller, to write as a witness to the lightning that struck American culture in the form of A Streetcar Named Desire ? Miller's rich perspective on Williams' singular style of poetic dialogue, sensitive characters, and dramatic violence makes this a unique and valuable new edition of A Streetcar Named Desire . This definitive new edition will also include Williams' essay "The World I Live In," and a brief chronology of the author's life.

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, Tennessee Williams's A Streetcar Named Desire is the tale of a catastrophic confrontation between fantasy and reality, embodied in the characters of Blanche DuBois and Stanley Kowalski. This Penguin Modern Classics edition includes an introduction by Arthur Miller.'I have always depended on the kindness of strangers'Fading southern belle Blanche DuBois is adrift in the modern world. When she arrives to stay with her sister Stella in a crowded, boisterous corner of New Orleans, her delusions of grandeur bring her into conflict with Stella's crude, brutish husband Stanley Kowalski. Eventually their violent collision course causes Blanche's fragile sense of identity to crumble, threatening to destroy her sanity and her one chance of happiness.Tennessee Williams's steamy and shocking landmark drama, recreated as the immortal film starring Marlon Brando, is one of the most influential plays of the twentieth century.Tennessee Williams (1911-1983) was born in Columbus, Mississippi. 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 evenings writing. 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 The Glass Menagerie (1944), The Rose Tattoo (1951), Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955), Sweet Bird of Youth (1959), The Night of the Iguana (1961), and Small Craft Warnings (1972).If you enjoyed A Streetcar Named Desire, you might like The Glass Menagerie, also available in Penguin Modern Classics.'Lyrical and poetic and human and heartbreaking and memorable and funny'Francis Ford Coppola, director of The Godfather'One of the greatest American plays'Observer

The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone is vintage Tennessee Williams. Published in 1950, his first novel was acclaimed by Gore Vidal as “splendidly written, precise, short, complete, and fine.” It is the story of a wealthy, fiftyish American widow recently a famous stage beauty, but now “drifting.” The novel opens soon after her husband’s death and her retirement from the theatre, as Mrs. Stone tries to adjust to her aimless new life in Rome. She is adjusting, too, to aging. (“The knowledge that her beauty was lost had come upon her recently and it was still occasionally forgotten.”) With poignant wit and his own particular brand of relish, Williams charts her drift into an affair with a cruel young gigolo: “As compelling, as fascinating, and as technically skillful as his play” (Publishers Weekly).

These three dramatic works by Tennessee Williams explore the darker side of human nature and are haunted by a sense of isolation and regret. "Suddenly Last Summer" is the starkly told story of Catherine, who seemingly goes insane after her cousin Sebastian dies in grisly circumstances on a trip to Europe. "The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore" is a passionate examination of a wealthy old woman as she recounts her memories in the face of death, while in "Small Craft Warnings" a motley group of people - including a blowsy beautician, a discredited alcoholic doctor, a vulnerable waif and two gay men - sit around a seedy bar on the Californian coast, each contemplating their own desperate fate.

Williams wrote: "This is a play about love in its purest terms." It is also Williams's robust and persuasive plea for endurance and resistance in the face of human suffering. The earthy widow Maxine Faulk is proprietress of a rundown hotel at the edge of a Mexican cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean where the defrocked Rev. Shannon, his tour group of ladies from a West Texas women's college, the self-described New England spinster Hannah Jelkes and her ninety-seven-year-old grandfather, Jonathan Coffin ("the world's oldest living and practicing poet"), a family of grotesque Nazi vacationers, and an iguana tied by its throat to the veranda, all find themselves assembled for a rainy and turbulent night. This is the first trade paperback edition of The Night of the Iguana and comes with an Introduction by award-winning playwright Doug Wright, the author's original Foreword, the short story "The Night of the Iguana" which was the germ for the play, plus an essay by noted Tennessee Williams scholar, Kenneth Holditch. "I'm tired of conducting services in praise and worship of a senile delinquent-yeah, that's what I said, I shouted All your Western theologies, the whole mythology of them, are based on the concept of God as a senile delinquent and, by God, I will not and cannot continue to conduct services in praise and worship of this...this...this angry, petulant old man." -The Rev. T. Lawrence Shannon, from The Night of the Iguana

In celebration of the Tennessee Williams centennial in 2011, The Library of America presents its acclaimed two-volume edition of his plays in a collector's boxed set. Gathering thirty-two works written from the 1930s to the 1980s, this is the most complete collection ever published of the playwright who transformed the American stage. The first volume opens with the rediscovered early plays, Spring Storm and Not About Nightingales, and contains such classics as The Glass Menagerie, A Streetcar Named Desire, The Rose Tattoo, and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, as well as a selection of one acts.
The second volume includes Orpheus Descending, Suddenly Last Summer, Sweet Bird of Youth, Period of Adjustment, The Night of the Iguana, The Eccentricities of a Nightingale, Out Cry, and A Lovely Sunday for Creve Coeur.

It is a very short list of 20th-century American plays that continue to have the same power and impact as when they first appeared 57 yearsafter its Broadway premiere, Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire is one of those plays. The story famously recounts how the faded and promiscuous Blanche DuBois is pushed over the edge by her sexy andbrutal brother-in-law, Stanley Kowalski. Streetcar launched the careers of Marlon Brando, Jessica Tandy, Kim Hunter and Karl Malden, and solidified the position of Tennessee Williams as one of the most important young playwrights of his generation, as well as that of EliaKazan as the greatest American stage director of the '40s and '50s. Who better than America's elder statesman of the theater, Williams' contemporary Arthur Miller, to write as a witness to the lightning that struck American culture in the form of A Streetcar Named Desire? Miller's rich perspective on Williams' singular style of poetic dialogue, sensitive characters, and dramatic violence makes this a unique and valuable new edition of A Streetcar Named Desire. This definitive new edition will also include Williams' essay "The World I Live In," and a brief chronology of the author's life.

"I cannot write any sort of story," said Tennessee to Gore Vidal] "unless there is at least one character in it for whom I have physical desire." These transgressive Tales of Desire, including "One Arm," "Desire and the Black Masseur," "Hard Candy," and "The Killer Chicken and the Closet Queen," show the iconic playwright at his outrageous best.