The second volume traces Williams' career as it evolved in his adventurous and sometimes shocking later works, including Orpheus Descending, Suddenly Last Summer, and Sweet Bird of Youth, plays that deal with acts of horrific violence; the satiric Period of Adjustment, The Night of the Iguana, a moving drama that contains some of Williams' most lyric writing, and The Eccentricities of a Nightingale, a reimagining of the earlier Summer and Smoke. Kingdom of Earth (also known as The Seven Descents of Myrtle) began a more experimental phase of Williams' writing represented her by The Mutilated, Small Craft Warnings, and Out Cry, while in his final phase, in such plays as A Lovely Sunday for Creve Coeur and the autobiographical Vieux Carre, Williams returned to many of his earlier themes and settings".

The 33 plays collected here reveal a prophetic figure in American life and letters, a writter of generous sympathies and uncompromising fankness who reached wide audiences with plays that revolutionized the themes and the styles, of the modern theater.

This edition includes a newly researched chronology of Williams' life, explanatory notes an essay on the texts, and east lists of many of the original productions.