Tennessee Williams (1911-1983), dramatist and fiction writer, was one of America's major mid-20th-century playwrights.

Tennessee Williams was born Thomas Lanier Williams in Columbus, Mississippi, on March 26, 1911. Interestingly enough, he originally lied about his birth date in order to be eligible for a writing contest in his youth and the incorrect date seems to have followed him for some time. So, his birth date is often still incorrectly listed today as March 26, 1914. His father was a traveling salesman, and for many years the family lived with his mother's parents. When Williams was about 13, they moved to a crowded tenement in St. Louis, Missouri. At the age of 16 he published his first story. The next year he entered the University of Missouri but left before taking a degree. He worked for two years for a shoe company, spent a year at Washington University (where he had his first plays...