The 1952 work by the Streetcar Named Desire playwright was found in Yale University’s archives
As soon as he crossed the border into Italy, Tennessee Williams found his health was “magically restored”. “There was the sun and there were the smiling Italians,” wrote the author of A Streetcar Named Desire in his memoirs. Now a previously unpublished short story by Williams describes his protagonist experiencing similar feelings – although the Italians do not feel quite so warmly towards him.
Published for the first time this week in the Strand Magazine, Williams’ 1952 story The Summer Woman was found in his archives at Yale University’s Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library. It follows an American academic who visits Rome each summer to continue his relationship with a woman he first met when she was working the streets. But as the years pass after the end of the second world war, he finds hostility towards Americans growing.