The Glass Menagerie

The memory play that launched Tennessee Williams to theatrical immortality. This 1970 New Directions paperback demonstrates the play's enduring power - by its sixteenth printing, "The Glass Menagerie" had become an American classic, performed continuously since its 1944 Chicago premiere. Williams called it a "memory play," using Tom Wingfield's narration to frame his own family's St. Louis struggles during the Depression. Laura's glass animals, Amanda's faded Southern belle illusions, and Tom's desperate need to escape create a triangle of thwarted desires that transcends its specific moment.

The play pioneered techniques - direct address to audience, expressionistic lighting, symbolic set pieces - that would influence American drama for decades. Williams's stage directions are themselves prose poems, calling for "a fragile, tenuous atmosphere" and explaining his theory of "plastic theatre" that goes beyond realistic representation. New Directions' commitment to keeping the play in print as literature, not just performance script, recognizes its dual life as both theatrical and literary achievement.