Tennessee Williams was born Thomas Lanier Williams in Columbus, Mississippi, on March 26, 1911, to Cornelius Coffin, a traveling shoe salesman, and Edwina Dakin Williams, the well-bred daughter of a southern minister. When Williams was seven, the family moved north to St. Louis due to a decline in the family’s fortunes. The young Williams wanted to be a writer, but his father forced the would-bewriter to work in a shoe factory, a job he hated and that eventually caused him to suffer a nervous breakdown. Williams attended college at the University of Missouri and Washington University, where he first began writing plays and gained the nickname “Tennessee” because of his southern accent. The Depression interrupted his education for two years; in 1938 he earned a B.A. degree at the University of Iowa, where he had gone to study dramatic writing. After graduating, Williams traveled from city to city working at menial jobs. A course in playwriting in New York City and the prize he took in a writing contest resulted in a job offer to be a screenwriter in Hollywood. It was at this point that Williams began writing what would later become The Glass Menagerie, drawing on his early days in St.
