Īs a young child Williams nearly died from a case of diphtheria that left him frail and virtually confined to his house during a year of recuperation. He had two siblings, older sister Rose Isabel Williams (1909–1996) and younger brother Walter Dakin Williams (1919 –2008). Among his ancestors was musician and poet Sidney Lanier. Williams lived in his grandfather's Episcopalian rectory with his family for much of his early childhood and was close to his grandparents. Dakin, a music teacher, and the Reverend Walter Dakin, an Episcopal priest from Illinois who was assigned to a parish in Clarksdale, Mississippi, shortly after Williams's birth. His mother, Edwina, was the daughter of Rose O. His father was a traveling shoe salesman who became an alcoholic and was frequently away from home. Thomas Lanier Williams III was born in Columbus, Mississippi, of English, Welsh, and Huguenot ancestry, the second child of Edwina Dakin (Aug– June 1, 1980) and Cornelius Coffin "C. Tennessee Williams (age 5) in Clarksdale, Mississippi In 1979, four years before his death, Williams was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame. He also wrote short stories, poetry, essays, and a volume of memoirs.
Much of Williams's most acclaimed work has been adapted for the cinema. His drama A Streetcar Named Desire is often numbered on short lists of the finest American plays of the 20th century alongside Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey into Night and Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman. With his later work, Williams attempted a new style that did not appeal as widely to audiences.
It was the first of a string of successes, including A Streetcar Named Desire (1947), Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955), Sweet Bird of Youth (1959), and The Night of the Iguana (1961). He introduced "plastic theatre" in this play and it closely reflected his own unhappy family background. Īt age 33, after years of obscurity, Williams suddenly became famous with the success of The Glass Menagerie (1944) in New York City. Along with contemporaries Eugene O'Neill and Arthur Miller, he is considered among the three foremost playwrights of 20th-century American drama. Thomas Lanier Williams III (Ma– February 25, 1983), known by his pen name Tennessee Williams, was an American playwright and screenwriter.
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