Dates
- Creation: 1932-1983
Language of Materials
Collection materials are in English.
Conditions Governing Access
There are no restrictions on physical access to this material.
Item (1458) boxes 44 and 45, are not housed at the Houghton Library but are shelved offsite at the Harvard Depository. Retrieval requires advance notice. Readers should check with Houghton Public Services staff to determine what material is offsite and retrieval policies and times.
Extent
20 linear feet (45 boxes)Arrangement
Plays are organized alphabetically by title. For each play, dated material appears first and is organized chronologically, followed by undated complete or partial drafts, and then by groups of loose sheets organized by asset number.
The title of the final published version of each play is used, ensuring that different versions of the same play will appear together. Variant titles which appear on the piece are described in the notes, and cross-references have been provided as appropriate.
Physical Location
b, Harvard Depository
Processing Information
Tennessee Williams was a very prolific playwright. He also continued to revise many of his plays long after they were produced and published. He frequently changed the titles of his plays, as well as the names of the characters. He often did not date or paginate his drafts and revisions. The papers acquired by Houghton were received in a very disorganized state, with loose pages of dozens of different plays often interleaved together without any identification.
The identification of plays performed or published during Williams's lifetime is generally not difficult, but variants of some character names and titles have been noted below. For lesser-known plays, the names of characters and occasionally a brief plot synopsis have been added, which may help researchers to identify these works as drafts of better-known plays.
Repository Details
Part of the Houghton Library Repository
Houghton Library is Harvard College's principal repository for rare books and manuscripts, archives, and more. Houghton Library's collections represent the scope of human experience from ancient Egypt to twenty-first century Cambridge. With strengths primarily in North American and European history, literature, and culture, collections range in media from printed books and handwritten manuscripts to maps, drawings and paintings, prints, posters, photographs, film and audio recordings, and digital media, as well as costumes, theater props, and a wide range of other objects. Houghton Library has historically focused on collecting the written record of European and Eurocentric North American culture, yet it holds a large and diverse number of primary sources valuable for research on the languages, culture and history of indigenous peoples of the Americas, Africa, Asia and Oceania.
Houghton Library’s Reading Room is free and open to all who wish to use the library’s collections.
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