The Selected Letters of Tennessee Williams: v. 2 1945-1957

Volume I ofThe Selected Letters of Tennessee Williamsends with the unexpected triumph ofThe Glass Menagerie. Volume II extends the correspondence from 1946 to 1957, a time of intense creativity which saw the production ofA Streetcar Named Desire,The Rose Tattoo,Camino Real, andCat on a Hot Tin Roof. Following the immense success ofStreetcar, Williams struggles to retain his prominence with a prodigious outpouring of stories, poetry, and novels as well as plays. Several major film projects, including the notoriousBaby Doll, bring Williams and his collaborator Elia Kazan into conflict with powerful agencies of censorship, exposing both the conservative landscape of the 1950s and Williams' own studied resistance to the forces of conformity. Letters written to Kazan, Carson McCullers, Gore Vidal, publisher James Laughlin, and Audrey Wood, Williams' resourceful agent, continue earlier lines of correspondence and introduce new celebrity figures. The Broadway and Hollywood successes in the evolving career of America's premier dramatist vie with a string of personal losses and a deepening depression to make this period an emotional and artistic rollercoaster for Tennessee. Compiled by leading Williams scholars Albert J. Devlin, Professor of English at the University of Missouri, and Nancy M. Tischler, Professor Emerita of English at the Pennsylvania State University,Volume IImaintains the exacting standard ofVolume I, called byChoice: "a volume that will prove indispensable to all serious students of this author...meticulous annotations greatly increase the value of this gathering."