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.

在线阅读本书 Book Description Published in 1949 by John Lehman. Very good copy in a very good dust jacket with slight wear. There are minor foxing, nicks, and wear to the dust jacket, with an ink inscription. The basis of the 1951 film (winner of three Academy Awards) starring Marlon Brando, Vivien Leigh, Kim Hunter, and Karl Malden, Williams's play is one of the works by which 20th-century America defines itself. First English edition of this landmark, Pulitzer-Prize-winning play, featuring Williams's riveting creations. From The Merriam-Webster Encyclopedia of Literature Play in three acts by Tennessee Williams, first produced and published in 1947 and winner of the Pulitzer Prize for drama for that year. One of the most admired plays of its time, it concerns the mental and moral disintegration and ultimate ruin of Blanche DuBois, a former Southern belle. Her neurotic, genteel pretensions are no match for the harsh realities symbolized by her brutish brother-in-law, Stanley Kowalski. Book Dimension length: (cm)17.1 　　　 　　　　　 　　　　　 width:(cm)10.7

No play in the modern theatre has so captured the imagination and heart of the American public as Tennessee Williams's The Glass Menagerie. Menagerie was Williams's first popular success and launched the brilliant, if somewhat controversial, career of our pre-eminent lyric playwright. Since its premiere in Chicago in 1944, with the legendary Laurette Taylor in the role of Amanda, the play has been the bravura piece for great actresses from Jessica Tandy to Joanne Woodward, and is studied and performed in classrooms and theatres around the world. The Glass Menagerie (in the reading text the author preferred) is now available only in its New Directions Paperbook edition. A new introduction by prominent Williams scholar Robert Bray, editor of The Tennessee Williams Annual Review, reappraises the play more than half a century after it won the New York Drama Critics Circle Award: "More than fifty years after telling his story of a family whose lives form a triangle of quiet desperation, Williams's mellifluous voice still resonates deeply and universally." This edition of The Glass Menagerie also includes Williams's essay on the impact of sudden fame on a struggling writer, "The Catastrophe of Success," as well as a short section of Williams's own "Production Notes." The cover features the classic line drawing by Alvin Lustig, originally done for the 1949 New Directions edition.

田纳西·威廉斯（1911—1983）是美国20世纪最伟大的三大戏剧家之一（另外两位是尤金·奥尼尔和阿瑟·米勒），也是世界范围内作品流传最广的美国当代文学大师之一——主要通过舞台剧演出，尤其是电影。《热铁皮屋顶上的猫》是田纳西·威廉斯最重要的代表作之一，度为他赢得第二个普利策奖。 剧本表现的是一个南方大家族的家庭关系全靠谎言维系的悲剧。“大爹”身患重病不久于世，他的两个性格相反的儿子布里克和古柏带着媳妇参加他六十五岁的生日聚会。古柏夫妇一心想谋得巨额家产；弟弟布里克却因身陷同性恋的自我怀疑中而酗酒成性。“大爹”与玛吉的形象丰富饱满、呼之欲出。这个剧本也是美国剧坛最著名的保留剧目之一。其电影版也成为电影史上的经典，由两位偶像兼演技的伟大演员：保罗·纽曼和伊丽莎白·泰勒出演。