Tennessee Williams: A Great American Author

Thomas Lanier Williams, born in Columbus, Mississippi to Edwina Dakin and Cornelius Coffin Williams, became one of the nations greatest playwrights. He was born on March 26, 1911 in his grandfather, Reverend Walter E. Dakin's, Episcopal Church. William's mother, Edwina, was a lively and colorful woman. She married a man whom contradicted her lifestyle. That man was Cornelius Williams, a gruff, pistol dueler with a violent temper. He was a lieutenant in the Spanish American War and a descendent from frontiersmen. Cornelius and Edwina married and continued to live in Mississippi. Cornelius had a job as a traveling salesman. Thomas became sick with diphtheria at age five which is how his love for literature bloomed. He lived in Mississippi until his family moved to St. Louis. The move was hard on him. The change from living in his grandfather's church to a tight tenement began to form a type of neuroses in Thomas. …