Tennessee Williams and Columbia

ANDREAS BROWN

WITH the recent acquisitions of several Tennessee
Williams manuscripts and a substantial collection of
inscribed first editions, the Columbia University Li¬
braries now rank among the three or four leading centers for the
study of the remarkable talents of America's much honored play¬
wright, poet, novelist, short story writer, essayist and librettist.

It is particularly appropriate that an important collection should
now be housed in the Columbia University Libraries. First, the
archive of Hart Crane, whom Williams considered to have had
the single greatest literary influence on his life, is located there.
Also at Columbia are the extension editorial files of Random
House, the company which published Williams's first important
play. The Glass Menagerie. Finally, the acquisition of the orig¬
inal working typescripts of four of Williams's best known plays
was largely made possible by the memorial gift fund established
at Columbia by the family of the late Bennett Cerf, founder and
later Chairman of the Board of Random House.

Thomas Lanier Williams, who became "Tennessee Williams"
with publication of a short story in 1939, was born on March 26,
1911, in Columbus, Missi.ssippi. His grandfather was the local
Episcopalian Rector. The rectory was his home for his first seven
years and he often travelled with his grandfather during the lat-
ter's house calls. Williams says that his memories of these visits
furnished him with important material for his later works. His
father was a travelling salesman for the International Shoe Com¬
pany; when he was promoted to an executive position in 1918,
the family moved to St. Louis. After the tranquility of the south,
Tennessee and his sister Rose found adjustment to the harsher
urban life difficult. Added tension caused by the now constant
presence of a worldly father who liked to drink and smoke began

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