Tennessee Williams

Williams, Tennessee (Thomas Lanier Williams; 1911–83), U.S. playwright. His emotionally intense plays are full of brilliant, poetic dialogue and deal with the effects of failure, loneliness, and futile obsessions on human beings. His first success, The Glass Menagerie (1945), was followed by A Streetcar Named Desire (1947) and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955), both of which received Pulitzer Prizes. Other plays include Sweet Bird of Youth (1959) and The Night of the Iguana (1961).