We did most of the primary research for this volume during three pilgrimages to the Tennessee Williams Papers at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin. The University of South, in Sewanee, Tennessee, generously allowed us the necessary permissions to photocopy from this collection. We also consulted the Williams collections at UCLA, Columbia, Harvard, and the files at New Directions Publishing Corporation, which were made available to us by our editor, Peggy Fox. Fred Todd very kindly allowed us access to his own valuable Williams manuscripts, now housed at the Historic New Orleans Collection.
Our efforts in Austin were facilitated by the receipt of joint Ransom Center Visiting Fellowships in the summer of 2000, which were crucial to the book’s timely completion. No less instrumental were the Ransom Center staff who made our work both fruitful and fun. We are grateful to them all, and especially to Pat Fox, Rich Oram, Tara Wenger, and Cathy Henderson. Charlotte Brown of UCLA went out of her way to procure a usable copy of the frontispiece for our designer, Sylvia Frezzolini Severance—who bravely met this and a thousand other graphic challenges.
At the University of the South, David Landon first urged us to undertake this project, and has since shared his uncommon insights into the qualities of Williams’s poems. We appreciate the unstinting support of Fred Croom, the legal assistance of Donna Pierce, and the words of encouragement from Sam Williamson and Wyatt Prunty. In London, we are indebted to Tom Erhardt of Casarotto Ramsay & Associates Ltd.
The Tennessee Williams circle of scholars, as we have learned, is an especially friendly and helpful group of people. We have benefited in particular from the advice of Allean Hale, Andreas Brown, Brian Parker and Robert Bray. Throughout our work we have stood on the distinguished shoulders of the editors of Williams’s Selected Letters, Al Devlin and Nancy Tischler, and of his late biographer, Lyle Leverich.
In matters both intellectual and personal, we have incurred numerous debts to Pamela Beatrice, Helene Grandvoinnet, Joan and Yiannis Moschovakis, Arnold Rampersad, Michael Kahn, Emily Mann, and Steven Scott Mazzola.
We owe a special debt of gratitude to Drewey Wayne Gunn and George Crandell (Williams’s two bibliographers). Professor Gunn kindly and generously took the time to write a letter concerning the first printing, pointing out several omissions in the text and the notes. We have done our best—within practical limits—to rectify these. Professor Crandell also gently noted an omission, along with a typographical error in his published review of The Collected Poems. The expertise of these readers has improved the present volume.
We are most grateful to Peggy Fox and Thomas Keith at New Directions. They are keeping James Laughlin’s commitment to Williams and his legacy alive.