Summer and Smoke.

WILLIAMS, Tennessee.

Item Number: 142276

New York: New Directions, 1948.

First edition of this classic work. Octavo, original cloth. Boldly signed by Tennessee Williams on the half-title page. Near fine in a near fine dust jacket. Jacket design by Alvin Lustig. Housed in a custom half morocco and chemise clamshell box.

Summer and Smoke is a two-part, thirteen-scene Summer and Smoke is a play by Tennessee Williams, completed in 1948. He began working on the play in 1945 as Chart of Anatomy, derived from his short stories "Oriflamme" and the then-work-in-progress "Yellow Bird." The phrase "summer and smoke" probably comes from the Hart Crane poem "Emblems of Conduct" in the 1926 collection White Buildings. It was the basis for the 1961 film directed by Peter Glenville, and starring Laurence Harvey and Geraldine Page, with Rita Moreno, Una Merkel, John McIntire, Thomas Gomez, Pamela Tiffin, Malcolm Atterbury, Lee Patrick, and Earl Holliman.