Tennessee Williams By: Kendra Robinette 1911-1983

General Biographical Information He was born on March 26, 1911 as Thomas Lanier Williams in Columbus, Mississippi. His mother, “Miss Edwina”, was the daughter of an Episcopalian minister, was repressed and genteel, very much the southern belle in her youth. His father, Cornelius, was a traveling salesman, often away from his family and often violent and drunk when at home. As a child, Williams was sickly and overprotected by his mother, he was closely attached to his sister, Rose, repelled by the roughhouse world of boys, and alienated from his father. He was collaborating on a film of two stories about his sister Rose when he died, apparently having choked on the lid of a pill bottle on February 25, 1983 in New York City, New York.

Professional Information He attended the University of Missouri for two years. He then worked at his father’s shoe-factory warehouse for three years and wrote a lot at night. After recovering from a nervous breakdown from life being difficult, he went on to further studies at Washington University—from which he earned a B.A. in 1938—and the University of Iowa. He lived in several places that influenced much of his work such as New Orleans, Louisiana (provided the setting for A Streetcar Named Desire), Mexico, and Key West, Florida where he wrote plays, poems, novels, and short stories. He was able to support himself much of his life through the commissions on his plays and films.

Personal Life When Williams worked at the shoe-factory, his closest friend was his coworker, Stanley Kowalski. Her name and characteristics would later be used in A Streetcar Named Desire. In New Orleans, Williams changed his name to “Tennessee”, later giving various romantic reasons for doing so and he also actively entered the homosexual world. His sister, Rose, was the source and inspiration for everything Williams wrote, either directly or indirectly. Williams depended on alcohol and a wide variety of drugs, especially to help him sleep and to keep himself awake in early mornings. This eventually lead to a downward spiral and his brother hospitalized him in 1969.

The Work Itself Williams is most known for his plays. In the course of his long career he also produced three volumes of short stories, many of them as studies for subsequent dramas; two novels, two volumes of poetry; his memoirs; and essays on his life and craft. He won a prize for a collection of one-act plays, American Blues. His first financial success was a “memory play” called The Glass Menagerie. The Streetcar Named Desire was more of a success than The Glass Menagerie and it won the Pulitzer Prize. He won another Pulitzer Prize for his play Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Some of his influences are: Anton Chekhov (the nineteenth century Russian writer of dramas with lonely, searching characters), D. H. Lawrence (the British novelist who emphasized the theme of a sexual life force), and above all American Hart Crane, homosexual poete maudit. Williams shared with Eugene O’Neill an impatience over the theatrical conventions of realism. Williams relied on effects and language, especially of a vivid and colloquial Southern speech that may be compared with that of William Faulkner, Eudora Welty, or Flannery O’Connor.

Sources "About Tennessee Williams." American Masters. PBS, 08 Feb. 1999. Web. 27 July 2016. <http:// www.pbs.org/wnet/ americanmasters/tennessee- williams-about-tennessee- williams/737/>. Baym, Nina, and Robert S. Levine, eds. The Norton Anthology of American Literature. 8th ed. Vol. E. New York: W. W. Norton, 2012. Print. "Tennessee Williams." Poetry Foundation. Poetry Foundation, n.d. Web. 27 July 2016. <https://www.poetryfoundation.org/ poems-and-poets/poets/detail/tennessee-williams>.