 First edition | |
| Author | Tennessee Williams |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Publisher | New Directions Publishing |
Publication date | 1954 |
| Media type | Print (hardback) |
| Pages | 220 |
| OCLC | 6662774 |
Hard Candy: A Book of Stories is a collection of short stories by American writer Tennessee Williams, which was first published in 1954 by New Directions. [1]
Those stories published originally in magazines before being collected in Hard Candy are indicated. [2]
The period in which Williams wrote the stories for Hard Candy were contemporaneous with the staging of A Streetcar Named Desire (1948) with his emergence as “America’s most important playwright.” [3]
The years 1948-1952 were a “golden age” for Williams, both personally and professionally. [4] Literary critic and biographer Gore Vidal termed 1948 Williams’ “ annus mirabilis " [5]
Literary critic Dennis Vannatta cautions that “although this period produced a bright flowering of his short fiction, not every story written during this time is first-rate.” [6]
In March 1954 Williams noted in a letter that he was "pulling together a short-long play based on the characters in "Three Players." [7] The play was Cat on a Hot Tin Roof .
The 1967 paperback edition, dedicated to Jane and Paul Bowles, notes that the title piece, "Hard Candy," is a later version of "The Mysteries of the Joy Rio," yet both stories are included, despite employing the same theme and the same setting, because the accounts are so different. [8]
Thomas Lanier Williams III, known by his pen name Tennessee Williams, was an American playwright and screenwriter. Along with contemporaries Eugene O'Neill and Arthur Miller, he is considered among the three foremost playwrights of 20th-century American drama.
Delmore Schwartz was an American poet and short story writer.
Priscilla Denise Levertov was a British-born naturalised American poet. She was a recipient of the Lannan Literary Award for Poetry.
John Champlin Gardner Jr. was an American novelist, essayist, literary critic, and university professor. He is best known for his 1971 novel Grendel, a retelling of the Beowulf myth from the monster's point of view.
Clothes for a Summer Hotel is a two-act play written in 1979–80 by Tennessee Williams concerning the relationship between novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald and his wife Zelda. A critical and commercial failure, it was Williams' last play to debut on Broadway during his lifetime. The play takes place over a one-day visit Scott pays the institutionalized Zelda at Highland Mental Hospital in Asheville, North Carolina, with a series of flashbacks to their marriage in the twenties. Williams began work in 1976 on what he envisioned as a "long play" about the Fitzgeralds, and had Geraldine Page in mind to play Zelda from the start.
"A Distant Episode" is a short story by Paul Bowles. Written in 1945, it was first published in the Partisan Review and republished in New Directions in Prose and Poetry, #10 in 1948. It is also the title piece in a 1988 collection of Bowles's short stories, A Distant Episode: Selected Stories by Ecco Press.
Donald Windham was an American novelist and memoirist. He is perhaps best known for his close friendships with Truman Capote and Tennessee Williams. Born in Atlanta, Georgia, Windham moved with his then-boyfriend Fred Melton, an artist, to New York City in 1939. In 1942 Windham collaborated with Williams on the play, You Touched Me!, which is based on a D. H. Lawrence short story with the same title. Windham received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1960.
The Seven Descents of Myrtle is a play in seven scenes by Tennessee Williams. It started as a short story, The Kingdom of Earth, which Williams began in 1942 while in Macon, Georgia, but did not publish until 1954, in the limited edition of his story collection Hard Candy. Williams subsequently adapted the story into a one-act play, "Kingdom of Earth," published in the February 1, 1967, edition of Esquire magazine. He then expanded that play into a full-length seven-scene version, premiered the following year in New York with the title The Seven Descents of Myrtle and published on October 31, 1968, by New Directions as Kingdom of Earth. Its title character is reminiscent of another Williams' heroine, Blanche Dubois in A Streetcar Named Desire.
Below is a bibliography of published works written by Thomas Merton, the Trappist monk of The Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani. Several of the works listed here have been published posthumously. The works are listed under each category by date of publication.
The Traveling Companion and Other Plays is a collection of experimental plays written by American playwright Tennessee Williams and published by New Directions and in New York City in 2008. It is edited by Williams scholar Annette J. Saddik, who provides the introduction.
Rachel Holmes Ingalls was an American-born author who had lived in the United Kingdom from 1965 onwards. She won the 1970 Authors' Club First Novel Award for Theft. Her novella Mrs. Caliban was published in 1982, and her book of short stories Times Like These in 2005.
"The Delicate Prey" is a piece of short fiction by Paul Bowles. It was written in 1949 and first published in Paris in the summer 1949 issue of the small literary journal Zero. In 1950, Random House presented the story in the collection of Bowles's short fiction, The Delicate Prey and Other Stories. This short story is considered one of Bowles' most outstanding and controversial works of fiction.
One Arm and Other Stories is a collection of short fiction by Tennessee Williams published by New Direction in 1948.
“The Mysteries of the Joy Rio” is a work of short fiction by Tennessee Williams. Written in 1941, the work first appeared in the collection Hard Candy: A Book of Stories (1954), published by New Directions.
“The Angel in the Alcove” is a work of short fiction by Tennessee Williams. It first appeared in the collection One Arm and Other Stories, published by New Directions in 1948.
“Desire and the Black Masseur” is a work of short fiction by Tennessee Williams first appearing in the collection One Arm and Other Stories, published by New Directions in 1948.
"The Yellow Bird" is an American short story by Tennessee Williams which first appeared in the magazine Town and Country in 1947 and was first collected in One Arm and Other Stories (1948), published by New Directions.
“The Night of the Iguana” is a short story by Tennessee Williams first appearing in the collection One Arm and Other Stories (1948) published by New Directions. Elements of the story provided the basis for Williams's play The Night of the Iguana (1961).
“Portrait of a Girl in Glass” is a work of short fiction by Tennessee Williams, first appearing in the collection One Arm and Other Stories published in 1948 by New Directions.