A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams - UK First Edition

First performed in 1947 in the Ethel Barrymore Theatre in New York, ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’ has a long-standing and well-loved legacy. The first UK performance was in the Aldwych Theatre on the 12th October 1949, and in the same year, a version of the script was published by John Lehmann publishers. It is the ‘English reading text, as approved by the author’ and includes the original script as it was written and performed.

The UK first edition also has a list of the primary cast from 1949 in London, with Vivien Leigh starring as Blanche Dubois and Laurence Olivier as the director. The play had already won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1948 and instantly became one of the most acclaimed plays of the 20th century. Coming from humble beginnings, Williams worked as a lift-boy, telephone operator, waiter, and cinema worker, all while writing, and went on to excel as an adored playwright by the 1940s.

While the dust jacket of this first UK edition of Tennessee Williams’ most famous play is evocative of a grand proscenium arch stage, the play itself deals with more intimate matters.

The inside of the dust jacket summarises ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’ as having a ‘highly developed sense of atmosphere and dramatic situation, the same subtle insight [as ‘The Glass Menagerie’] into human nature and mastery of the use of symbolism.’

Our first UK edition copy with the original dust jacket is a fantastic piece of history of one of the most iconic plays in the last one hundred years. It is being sold for £50.

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