"Combining his words with pictures, this biographical album reveals the closeness of Williams with the American South. Although he roamed far, he never forgot the "more congenial climate" the South afforded him and his creativity.".

Meticulously edited and annotated, Tennessee Williams's notebooks follow his 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.

"There isn't a dull or conventional page, or an unlovely sentence in the book."--Scott Eyman, The Palm Beach Post

Like Hemingway to Cuba or Mark Twain to the Mississippi, certain writers are inextricably tied to their environments-the culture, the history, the people, the cuisine. The plays of Tennessee Williams evoke the ambiance and flavor of the South. Part food memoir and part cookbook, this fresh look at the world of this great American playwright-both in real life and in his plays-is the perfect book for literary lovers and food lovers alike. Each chapter is based on one of Williams' plays and includes a short essay on food references within that play; highlighted food related quotes from the dialogue; a menu divined from the play; and archived photographs from Williams' life. With more than 80 recipes, fans will love the 50 full-color and black and white photos that showcase the recipes, locale, and history of this beloved American writer. Enjoy recipes such as: Chop Suey Soup Pecan-crusted Sweet Potato Pone Baton Aubergines Pork Loin Franchese Smoked Corn and Grilled Pepper Bisque Grilled Ahi Tuna, Pinapple Relish Maw Maw Lola's Fig Preserves Inspired by Tennessee William's Plays like: A Streetcar Named Desire Cat on a Hot Tin Roof The Glass Menagerie The Rose Tattoo Camino Real Night of the Iguana Battle of Angels Troy Gilbert is a native of New Orleans and the author of New Orleans Kitchens. Greg Picolo is a native of New Orleans and the chef of Bistro Maison de Ville, which offers sophisticated cuisine in the Louisiana Creole style.

No American dramatist has had more plays adapted than Tennessee Williams, and few modern dramatists have witnessed as much controversy during the adaptation process. His Hollywood legacy, captured in such screen adaptations as A Streetcar Named Desire, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and Suddenly, Last Summer, reflects the sea change in American culture in the mid-twentieth century. Placing this body of work within relevant contexts ranging from gender and sexuality to censorship, modernism, art cinema, and the Southern Renaissance, Hollywood's Tennessee draws on rarely examined archival research to recast Williams's significance. Providing not only cultural context, the authors also bring to light the details of the arduous screenwriting process Williams experienced, with special emphasis on the Production Code Administration--the powerful censorship office that drew high-profile criticism during the 1950s--and Williams's innovative efforts to bend the code. Going well beyond the scripts themselves, Hollywood's Tennessee showcases findings culled from poster and billboard art, pressbooks, and other production and advertising material. The result is a sweeping account of how Williams's adapted plays were crafted, marketed, and received, as well as the lasting implications of this history for commercial filmmakers and their audiences.

National Book Critics Circle Award Winner: Biography Category National Book Award Finalist 2015 Winner of the Sheridan Morley Prize for Theatre Biography American Academy of Arts and Letters’ Harold D. Vursell Memorial Award A Chicago Tribune 'Best Books of 2014' USA Today: 10 Books We Loved Reading Washington Post, 10 Best Books of 2014 The definitive biography of America's greatest playwright from the celebrated drama critic of The New Yorker. John Lahr has produced a theater biography like no other. Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh gives intimate access to the mind of one of the most brilliant dramatists of his century, whose plays reshaped the American theater and the nation's sense of itself. This astute, deeply researched biography sheds a light on Tennessee Williams's warring family, his guilt, his creative triumphs and failures, his sexuality and numerous affairs, his misreported death, even the shenanigans surrounding his estate. With vivid cameos of the formative influences in Williams's life—his fierce, belittling father Cornelius; his puritanical, domineering mother Edwina; his demented sister Rose, who was lobotomized at the age of thirty-three; his beloved grandfather, the Reverend Walter Dakin—Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh is as much a biography of the man who created A Streetcar Named Desire, The Glass Menagerie, and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof as it is a trenchant exploration of Williams’s plays and the tortured process of bringing them to stage and screen. The portrait of Williams himself is unforgettable: a virgin until he was twenty-six, he had serial homosexual affairs thereafter as well as long-time, bruising relationships with Pancho Gonzalez and Frank Merlo. With compassion and verve, Lahr explores how Williams's relationships informed his work and how the resulting success brought turmoil to his personal life. Lahr captures not just Williams’s tempestuous public persona but also his backstage life, where his agent Audrey Wood and the director Elia Kazan play major roles, and Marlon Brando, Anna Magnani, Bette Davis, Maureen Stapleton, Diana Barrymore, and Tallulah Bankhead have scintillating walk-on parts. This is a biography of the highest order: a book about the major American playwright of his time written by the major American drama critic of his time.

A close friend of Tennessee Williams during his early years as a writer gives an account of the literary great's early career, critiques his work, and reflects on the later, more successful time of Williams' life.

This definitive collection establishes Williams as a major American fiction writer of the twentieth century. Tennessee Williams’ Collected Stories combines the four short-story volumes published during Williams’ lifetime with previously unpublished or uncollected stories. Arranged chronologically, the forty-nine stories, when taken together with the memoir of his father that serves as a preface, not only establish Williams as a major American fiction writer of the twentieth century, but also, in Gore Vidal’s view, constitute the real autobiography of Williams’ "art and inner life."

This is a book-length study of the intense creative relationship between Tennessee Williams and Elia Kazan.

Now in paperback--the riveting, revelatory, and sole authorized account of the critical first decades of Tennessee Williams' life. "A huge accomplishment. Lyle Leverich's "Tom" is thorough and passionate, an astonishing tale".--John Lahr, "The New Yorker". Photos.