Tennessee Williams Books In Order

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Publication Order of Collections

Publication Order of Collection of Plays

Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books

Publication Order of Short Story Anthologies

Publication Order of William Inge's Plays

Publication Order of Anthologies

Tennessee Williams was an American author generally regarded one of the best playwrights ever to come out of the United States. Between the 1940s and the 1960s, he was one of the most prolific playwrights penning several award-winning plays, the most popular of which was “The Glass Menagerie”. His work is known for its dramatic flair, poetic language, heartbreaking themes, and gritty characters that have made them timeless American classics. Tennessee was born Thomas Lanier Williams III in March 1911 in Columbus, Mississippi, to straight-laced minister’s daughter Edwina Dakin Williams, and a traveling salesman Cornelius Coffin Williams. In 1918, the family moved to Louis, Missouri where Cornelius has found a job as the manager of the international Shoe Company in St. Louis. His parents were constantly fighting due his father’s violent temper and drinking. Things were even worse for the young Tennessee, who because of a serious bout of diphtheria became less robust than his father wished, resulting in a bad case father son resentment. Nonetheless, his mother was overly protective of him and showered him with love and attention. This period of his life was very important to the young author who used the troubles in his life as inspiration for his later writings. Shy and small, Tom was the victim of merciless cruelty and abuse at the Eugene Field Elementary School. Struggling to cope, he was sent to Mississippi to live with his grandparents for a year. When he came back, his mother got him a typewriter and by 1924, he got his first ever article “Isolated” published by his high school paper the Ben Blewett Junior High newspaper.

It was at University City High School where Tennessee’s writing started gaining a lot of traction as he wrote a series or highly popular short story collections and published two articles in major national newspapers. He would enroll at the University of Missouri journalism department in 1929 where he got an honorable mention in the Dramatic Arts Contest for “Beauty is the Word”, one of his earliest known plays. His father forced him to quit university in 1932 to take up a job at the shoe factory, though this never stopped the determined Tom from writing. By 1937, he had staged several plays in St. , before he enrolled at the drama department in the University of Iowa graduating in 1938 with an English degree. His name Tennessee Williams came about when being underage he had to submit his plays under a false date of birth and name. Despite lying on his application, he won the $100 prize on offer and from that time became professionally known as Tennessee Williams. It was during this time that he discovered traveling and also acknowledged that he was homosexual after having far too many of his relationships end in loneliness and sadness. The search for love became one of the major themes of his works from 1940, even as he wrote while for the most part working numerous odd jobs, in debt and broke.

Tennessee got his first major break when his play “The Glass Menagerie”, which was inspired by the characters and themes of his troubled family, became an instant hit with audiences. Opening to rave reviews in Chicago, it was soon moved to Broadway where it became an even bigger hit, setting Tennessee on the path to a successful career. The play is the story of a young man’s family whose mother tries to make a match between his disabled sister and a gentleman caller. His troubled life experiences and familial relations inspire everything in Tennessee Williams’s plays. His first play “The Glass Menagerie” received much critical acclaim that it won the best play of the season by the New York Drama Critics Circle Award. His next play “A Streetcar Named Desire” that he produced in 1947 to rave reviews would establish his name among the greats in American literature history. The play went on to win the 1948 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and together with his other play “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” were made into highly acclaimed films by Elia Kazan and Richard Brooks respectively. Several of his plays that referenced his struggles with alcoholism including his first play “The Glass Menagerie” were also made into motion pictures.

“The Glass Menagerie” is a play focusing on a family very similar to that of Tennessee Williams. Honing in on human emotions that influence the interaction between family members, it is set in St Louis during the interwar period. Amanda has found it difficult to bring up her two children after their father upped and left the family several years past. The abandonment by their father has had a profound impact on the family, which to an ordinary outsider would be the epitome of dysfunctional. Amanda tries her best to ensure that her children become the best they can be, but given that they are now adults, she has little if any authority to control their behavior. Both of the children had quit night school and Amanda’s hope of Tom becoming a business man or Laura becoming a typist have long since faded. Nonetheless, she still thinks highly of her children and glosses over their faults, which increasingly increases the odds that Tom may just become a mirror image of his father.

“A Streetcar Named Desire” is the Pulitzer Award-winning novel by Tennessee Williams that focuses on the themes of failure, love, and familial relationships. Stella Kowalski is very much in love with her husband Stanley Kowalski a war veteran, and would do anything to please him. Their life is complicated when Blanche Dubois Stella’s sister takes a streetcar named “Desire” and comes to spend her summer holidays in the Kowalski’s one bed-roomed apartment. Blanche is very different from her submissive sister being highly sexualized, which heightens the tension between her and her sister’s husband. Stanley can see beyond Blanche’s gaudy jewelry and clothes and with only a sheet separating their beds the tension rises in the sweltering heat of the summer. Stanley soon discovers Blanche’s tawdry past but Stella stands by her sister even as she is still loyal to a fault to her husband. The incredible loyalty that Stella has to both parties is what makes for an explosive conclusion that will shock almost every reader of the play.