Works by
Tennessee Williams
(aka Thomas Lanier Williams)
(Writer)
[1911 - 1983]

Biography/Memoirs

• The Selected Letters of Tennessee Williams, Vol. 2 (1945 - 1957) (2004), Albert J. Devlin and Nancy Marie Tischler, eds.

• Memoirs (1975)

Fiction

• Collected Stories (1986)

• It Happened the Day the Sun Rose (1981)
  Limited edition chap book.

• Moise and the World of Reason (1975)

• The Knightly Quest (1966)

• Three Players of a Summer Game(1960)

• Hard Candy (1959)

• Eight Mortal Ladies Possessed (1954)

• The Roman Spring of Mrs.Stone (1950)

• One Arm and Other Stories (1948)

Plays

• A House Not Meant to Stand: A Gothic Comedy (2008 release) by Tennessee Williams; Thomas Keith, ed.
  Christmas 1982: Cornelius and Bella McCorkle of Pascagoula, Mississippi, return home one midnight in a thunderstorm from the Memphis funeral of their older son to a house and a life literally falling apart—daughter Joanie is in an insane asylum and their younger son Charlie is upstairs having sex with his pregnant, holy-roller girlfriend as the McCorkles enter. Cornelius, who has political ambitions and a litany of health problems, is trying to find a large amount of moonshine money his gentle wife Bella has hidden somewhere in their collapsing house, but his noisy efforts are disrupted by a stream of remarkable characters, both living and dead.
  
  While Williams often used drama to convey hope and desperation in human hearts, it was through this dark, expressionistic comedy, which he called a "Southern gothic spook sonata," that he was best able to chronicle his vision of the fragile state of our world.

• Not About Nightingales (1998)

• Something Cloudy, Something Clear (1995)

• The Theatre of Tennessee Williams (1990)
  Vieux Carre, A Lovely Sunday for Creve Coeur, Clothes for a Summer Hotel, The Red Devil Battery Sign

• Red Devil Battery Sign (1988)

• Stopped Rocking and Other Screenplays (1984)

• The Eemarkable Rooming-House of Mme. Le Monde  (1984)

• Clothes for a Summer Hotel: A Ghost Play (1983)

• A Lovely Sunday for Creve Coeur (1980)

• Steps Must Be Gentle; A Dramatic Reading for Two Performers (1980)

• Vieux Carre (1979, 2000)
  Includes an introduction by Robert Bray.

• Two-Character Play (1979)

• Small Craft Warnings (1973)

• Dragon Country (A Book of Plays) (1970)

• In the Bar of a Tokyo Hotel (1969)

• Kingdom of Earth  (1968)

• The Mutilated (1967)

• The Eccentricities of a Nightingale (1964)

• The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore (1964)

• Five Plays (1962)

• The Night of the Iguana (1961)

• Fugitive Kind (1960)

• Period of Adjustment (1960)

• Garden District (1959)

• Sweet Bird of Youth (1959)

• A Perfect Analysis Given By a Parrot (1958)

• Orpheus Descending (1958)

• Suddenly Last Summer (1958)

• Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955)

• Camino Real (1953)

• The Rose Tattoo (1951)

• I Rise in Flame Cried the Phoenix (1951)

• American Blues (1948)

• Summer and Smoke (1948)

• A Streetcar Named Desire (1947)

• "You Touched Me" (1947) with Donald Windham
  A romantic comedy in three acts by Tennessee Williams and Donald Windham, suggested by a short story by D.H. Lawrence from 1922. This play was first performed at the Booth Theatre, New York City, on September 26, 1945. Montgomery Clift performed the part of Hadrian.

• 27 Wagons Full of Cotton (And Other One Act Plays (1945)

• Battle of Angels (1945)

• The Glass Menagerie (1945)

Poetry

• The Collected Poems of Tennessee Williams (2002) David E. Roessel and Nicholas Rand Moschovakis, eds.

• Androgyne, Mon Amour (1977)

• In the Winter of Cities (1956)

• Five Young American Poets (1944)

• The Summer Belvedere in Five Young American Poets (1944)

Other

• Notebooks (2007), Margaret Bradham Thornton, ed.
  Tennessee Williams’s Notebooks, here published for the first time, presents by turns a passionate, whimsical, movingly lyrical, self-reflective, and completely uninhibited record of the life of this monumental American genius from 1936 to 1981, the year of his death. In these pages Williams (1911-1981) wrote out his most private thoughts as well as sketches of plays, poems, and accounts of his social, professional, and sexual encounters. The notebooks are the repository of Williams’s fears, obsessions, passions, and contradictions, and they form possibly the most spontaneous self-portrait by any writer in American history. Meticulously edited and annotated by Margaret Thornton, the notebooks follow Williams’ growth as a writer from his undergraduate days to the publication and production of his most famous plays, from his drug addiction and drunkenness to the heights of his literary accomplishments. At one point, Williams writes, “I feel dull and disinterested in the literary line. Dr. Heller bores me with all his erudite discussion of literature. Writing is just writing! Why all the fuss about it?” This remarkable record of the life of Tennessee Williams is about writing—how his writing came up like a pure, underground stream through the often unhappy chaos of his life to become a memorable and permanent contribution to world literature.

• The Notebook of Trigorin: A Free Adaptation of Anton Chekhov’s The Sea Gull (1997)

• Five O'clock Angel: Letters of Tennessee Williams to Maria St. Just (1948-1982) (1990)

• Baby Doll. The Script for the Film (1956)

• Blue Mountain Ballads: Voice and Piano (1946) with Paul Bowles, Composer

• Where I Live: Selected Essays (1978)

• Tennessee Williams' Letters to Donald Windham 1940-1965 (1977)
  Spanning a quarter century of friendship, Williams's letters to Donald Windham offer insight into the playwright's views of his own work.

• The Modern Short Story in the Making (1964)
  With selections by Erskine Caldwell, James T. Farrell, Katherine Anne Porter, Luigi Pirnadello, Norman Mailer, Tennessee Williams, Truman Capote, William Saroyan, et al.

• Lord Byron's Love Letter (1955)
  Libretto

See also:

• Tennessee Williams and His Contemporaries (2007) by Robert Bray
  Tennessee Williams and His Contemporaries compiles eight transcribed panels that were featured at The Tennessee Williams Scholars Conference, an annual event held each March in conjunction with the Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival. This study, the first of its kind, explores issues involving Williams s drama, fiction, poetry, and films in a discursive format designed to probe and debate the legacy of America s famous playwright. Virtually all aspects of Williams s long career are covered in this volume, including the early and late plays, his unpublished work, his use of the grotesque, and his relationships with three of his contemporaries: Carson McCullers, Lillian Hellman, and William Inge. In addition, Williams scholars who teach his work discuss the most effective strategies for bringing his material into the classroom. The unique design of this volume offers a broad understanding of his material for students previously unacquainted with Tennessee Williams as well as fresh perspectives from recognized experts in the field that will satisfy those who are already familiar with his life and work.

• Tennessee Williams in Provincetown (2006) by David Kaplan
  Tennessee Williams in Provincetown is the story of Tennessee Williams' four summer seasons in Provincetown, Massachusetts: 1940, '41, '44 and '47. During that time he wrote plays, short stories, and jewel-like poems. In Provincetown Williams fell in love unguardedly for perhaps the only time in his life. He had his heart broken there, perhaps irreparably. The man he thought might replace his first lover tried to kill him there, or at least Williams thought so. Williams drank in Provincetown, he swam there, and he took conga lessons there. He was poor and then rich there; he was photographed naked and clothed there. He was unknown and then famous--and throughout it all Williams wrote every morning. The list of plays Williams worked on in Provincetown include The Glass Menagerie, A Streetcar Named Desire, Summer and Smoke, the beginnings of The Night of the Iguana and Suddenly Last Summer, and an abandoned autobiographical play set in Provincetown, The Parade. Tennessee Williams in Provincetown collects original interviews, journals, letters, photographs, accounts from previous biographies, newspapers from the period, and Williams' own writing to establish how the time Williams spent in Provincetown shaped him for the rest of his life. The book identifies major themes in Williams' work that derive from his experience in Provincetown, in particular the necessity of recollection given the short season of love. The book also connects Williams mature theatrical experiments to his early friendships with Jackson Pollack, Lee Krasner and the German performance artist Valeska Gert. Tennessee Williams in Provincetown, based on several years of extensive research and interviews, includes previously unpublished photographs, previously unpublished poetry, and anecdotes by those who were there.

• Memoirs: I Remember Tennessee Williams and Others (2003) by Robert Hines

• Tennessee Williams and the South (2002)  by Kenneth W. Holditch and Richard Freeman Leavitt

• The Undiscovered Country : The Later Plays of Tennessee Williams (2002), Philip C. Kolin, ed.

• Tennessee Williams: A Portrait in Laughter and Lamentation (2000) by Harry Rasky

• Burroughs Live: The Collected Interviews of Wiliam S. Burroughs, 1960-1997 (2000), Sylvère Lotringer, ed.
  Burroughs Live gathers all the interviews, both published and unpublished, given by William Burroughs, as well as conversations with well-known writers, artists, and musicians such as Allen Ginsberg, Brion Gysin, Gregory Corso, Keith Richards, Tennessee Williams, Timothy Leary, and Patti Smith. The book provides a fascinating account of Burroughs's life as a literary outlaw. Illuminating many aspects of his work and many facets of his mind, it brings out his scathing humor, powerful intelligence, and nightmarish vision.

• The Selected Letters of Tennessee Williams, Volume I: 1920-1945 (2000), lbert J. Devlin and Nancy Marie Tischler, eds.

• Lost Friendships: A Memoir of Truman Capote, Tennessee Williams, and Others (1987) by Donald Windham

• Tennessee - Cry Of The Heart - An Intimate Memoir Of Tennessee Willaims (1986) by Dotson Rader

• Aphrodisiac: Fiction from Christopher Street (1984)
  Includes works by Andrew Holleran, Christopher Bram, Edmund White, Felice Picano, Jane Rule, Kate Millett, Tennessee Williams, and others.

• Footnote to a Friendship: A Memoir of Truman Capote & Others (1983) by Donald Windham

• Tennessee Williams' Letters to Donald Windham 1940-1965 (1977) with Donald Windham, ed.