A landmark volume from one of the most influential voices in American theater, The Collected Plays of Edward Albee, Volume 1: 1958–1965 gathers the works that transformed postwar drama and established Edward Albee as a major literary force.
This essential collection spans Albee’s extraordinary first decade as a playwright, tracing the evolution of a writer whose bold vision challenged audiences and redefined the possibilities of the stage.
Included are the groundbreaking one-act plays that introduced Albee to the theater world—The Zoo Story, The Death of Bessie Smith, The Sandbox, and The American Dream—along with his enduring masterpiece Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Readers will also find Albee’s celebrated adaptations of Carson McCullers’s The Ballad of the Sad Café and James Purdy’s Malcolm, as well as the enigmatic and thought-provoking Tiny Alice.
By turns darkly comic, psychologically penetrating, and fiercely original, these plays explore identity, illusion, family, power, loneliness, and the search for meaning in modern life. Together they represent one of the most exciting and inventive periods in contemporary American drama.
Featuring an introduction by Edward Albee, this volume is an indispensable resource for theater lovers, students, scholars, actors, directors, and anyone interested in the history of modern drama.