 Dramatist and fiction writer; one of America's major mid-20th-century playwrights.  Tennessee Williams was born Thomas Lanier Williams in Columbus, Mississippi, on March 26,  Williams died in New York City, February 25, 1983.

 When Williams was about 13, his family moved to a crowded tenement in St. Louis, Missouri. At the age of 16 he published his first story. At 17 he entered the University of Missouri but left before receiving a degree.

 He worked for two years for a shoe company, spent a year at Washington University (where he had his first plays produced), and earned a bachelor of arts degree from the State University of Iowa in 1938, the year he published his first short story under his literary name.

 The Glass Menagerie changed Williams' fortunes  Autobiographical piece  The play opened in Chicago in December 1944 and in New York in March  It received the New York Drama Critics Circle Award

 When A Streetcar Named Desire opened in 1947, New York audiences knew a major playwright had arrived. It won a Pulitzer Prize.  Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955) won the New York Drama Critics Circle Award and a Pulitzer Prize.

 Williams also wrote fiction, including two novels, one autobiography and four volumes of short stories  Over 100 poems written  Nine of his plays were made into films  He wrote one original screenplay, Baby Doll (1956).

 Suffered from depression after death of his partner in 1961  Through the 1970s and 1980s, Williams continued to write for the theater, though he was unable to repeat the success of most of his early years.  One of his last plays was Clothes for a Summer Hotel (1980), based on the American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald and his wife, Zelda.