A Streetcar Named Desire - Softcover

Williams Tennessee

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0141190272 ISBN 13: 9780141190273

Publisher: PENGUIN, 2009

Synopsis

Fading southern belle Blanche Dubois depends on the kindness of strangers and is adrift in the modern world. When she arrives to stay with her sister Stella in a crowded, boisterous corner of New Orleans, her delusions of grandeur bring her into conflict with Stella's crude, brutish husband Stanley. Eventually their violent collision course causes Blanche's fragile sense of identity to crumble, threatening to destroy her sanity and her one chance of happiness.

About this title

About the Author:

Tennessee Williams was born in 1911 in Columbus, Mississippi, where his grandfather was the episcopal clergyman. When his father, a travelling salesman, moved with his family to St Louis some years later, both he and his sister found it impossible to settle down to city life. He entered college during the Depression and left after a couple of years to take a clerical job in a shoe company. He stayed there for two years, spending the evenings writing. He entered the University of Iowa in 1938 and completed his course, at the same time holding a large number of part-time jobs of great diversity. He received a Rockefeller Fellowship in 1940 for his play Battle of Angels, and he won the Pulitzer Prize in 1948 and 1955. Among his many other plays Penguin have published The Glass Menagerie (1944), Summer and Smoke (1948), The Rose Tattoo (1951), Camino Real (1953), Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955), Orpheus Descending (1957), Sweet Bird of Youth (1959), Period of Adjustment (1960), The Night of the Iguana (1961), The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore (1963; revised 1964) and Small Craft Warnings (1972).

From AudioFile:

To listen to this riveting performance, recorded live at Lincoln Center in 1973, is a revelation. It takes the listener right to the heart of what makes Tennessee Williams's 1947 Pulitzer Prize-winning play a literary icon--the words, every last word. From the lilting sounds of Blanche DuBois's fragile and flighty poetic visions to the staccato tones of Stanley Kowalski's streetwise poker games, the performances weave image after image. There are few histrionics in Rosemary Harris, James Farentino, and Patricia Conolly's naturalistic portrayals of Blanche, Stanley, and Stella. Their vocal choices make the play's final scenes sound all the more credible, and devastating. A classic performance of an American classic. B.P. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2009, Portland, Maine

About this edition

• Publisher: PENGUIN
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 0141190272
• ISBN 13: 9780141190273
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 111