A Streetcar Named Desire

Tennessee Williams

Sep 2004 · New Directions Publishing

About this ebook

The Pulitzer Prize and Drama Critics Circle Award winning play—reissued with an introduction by Arthur Miller (Death of a Salesman and The Crucible), and Williams' essay "The World I Live In." It is a very short list of 20th-century American plays that continue to have the same power and impact as when they first appeared—57 years after its Broadway premiere, Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire is one of those plays. The story famously recounts how the faded and promiscuous Blanche DuBois is pushed over the edge by her sexy and brutal brother-in-law, Stanley Kowalski. Streetcar launched the careers of Marlon Brando, Jessica Tandy, Kim Hunter and Karl Malden, and solidified the position of Tennessee Williams as one of the most important young playwrights of his generation, as well as that of Elia Kazan as the greatest American stage director of the '40s and '50s.

Who better than America's elder statesman of the theater, Williams' contemporary Arthur Miller, to write as a witness to the lightning that struck American culture in the form of A Streetcar Named Desire? Miller's rich perspective on Williams' singular style of poetic dialogue, sensitive characters, and dramatic violence makes this a unique and valuable new edition of A Streetcar Named Desire. This definitive new edition will also include Williams' essay "The World I Live In," and a brief chronology of the author's life.

Ratings and reviews

Never even heard of this author, but I heard about him through a song. I'm half way through this book/play and it is pretty intense. Couldn't stop reading for a moment.

The format of the book was new to me, but I thought that the story was very interesting and it kept me reading. Blanche was a very interesting character and seeing her mental state change throughout the events of the story definitely makes for a great read.

Good but kind of sickening with how accurate it is

About the author

Tennessee Williams (1911–1983) was America’s most influential playwright. Readers have devoured his poetry, essays, short stories, and letters, as well as his fantastic late plays, his remarkable corpus of one-acts, and his greatest plays—The Glass Menagerie, A Streetcar Named Desire, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, The Night of the Iguana, The Rose Tattoo, Suddenly Last Summer, and Camino Real. Williams is a cornerstone of New Directions—we publish everything he wrote. He is also our single bestselling author.