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Along with contemporaries Eugene O'Neill and Arthur Miller, he is considered among the three foremost playwrights of 20th-century American drama. [1] At age 33, after years of obscurity, Williams suddenly became famous with the success of The Glass Menagerie (1944) in New York City.
Among the best Williams plays, three stand out as particularly exemplary representations of his work: A Streetcar Named Desire, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and The Glass Menagerie. A Streetcar Named Desire, with its searing portrayal of mental breakdown and desire, remains a timeless classic.
His lyrical dialogue drips with his special brand of Southern Gothic—a style found in fiction writers such as Flannery O’Connor and William Faulkner, but not often seen on the stage. Over his lifetime, Williams created over 30 full-length plays in addition to short stories, memoirs, and poetry.
Jun 13, 2024 · Tennessee Williams (1911–83) was an American dramatist whose best-known plays include A Streetcar Named Desire, The Glass Menagerie, and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. His work reveals a world of human frustration in which sex and violence underlie an atmosphere of romantic gentility.
Aug 10, 2023 · Tennessee Williams was a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright whose works include 'A Streetcar Named Desire' and 'Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.'
The production of his first two Broadway plays, The Glass Menagerie (1945) and A Streetcar Named Desire (1947), secured his place, along with Eugene O’Neill and Arthur Miller, as one of America’s major playwrights of the 20th century.
His life’s work adds up to twenty-five full-length plays, five screenplays, over seventy one-act plays, hundreds of short stories, two novels, poetry, and a memoir; five of his plays were also made into movies. Williams died from choking in a drug-related incident in 1983.
