This was a Christmas present from my husband from about ten years ago. After reading a review of the release of the DVDs The Fugitive Kind and The Last of the Mobile Hot Shots, both based on Williamsp plays, I decided to read some of the many plays I had skipped over. I forgot how much I used to love his writing. ( )

While I've 4****-rated the first Library of America volume of Tennessee Williams, I just can't rate this second volume better than 3***. It's just too incomplete to be of serious academic use (and also, please note that Williams produced other plays subsequent to 1980), whether because of space limitations or because of difficulty in obtaining rights to some of the omitted work.

This volume does, though, give a good sampling of and is probably the most complete single-volume anthology available of Williams's later plays, complete for full-length plays through 1968's The Seven Descents of Myrtle (though even here omitting most of the period's one-act plays). After 1968, the inclusiveness become much spottier, concluding with 1979's quite underrated A Lovely Sunday for Creve Coeur.

A good collection, but seriously lacking in completeness. ( )