The zoo story: The death of Bessie Smith; The sandbox; three plays

Edward Albee

Coward-McCann, Jun 1, 1960 - Drama - 158 pages

Includes the complete scripts for Albee's first 3 plays

About the author

Edward Albee was born on March 12, 1928. He was adopted as an infant by Reid Albee, the son of Edward Franklin Albee of the powerful Keith-Albee vaudeville chain. He was raised in great affluence and sent to preparatory and military schools. ending his formal education after a year and a half at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut. Albee often clashed with his mother and eventually left home when he was 20 and moved to New York's Greenwich Village. Albee's first job was writing continuity dialogue for radio station WNYC. After using up the inheritance from his paternal grandmother, he took a variety of menial jobs until 1959 when The Zoo Story made him a famous playwright, first in Europe, where it premiered in Berlin, and then in New York. In 1960 it won the Vernon Rice Memorial Award. Albee's first and major "hit" was Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? which opened on Broadway in 1963. It ran for 664 performances and was made into a film starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, and is probably Albee's most well known work. 1966's A Delicate Balance won Albee his first Pulitzer Prize. In 1975, Albee won his second Pulitzer with Seascape, and then his third with Three Tall Women in 1991. Three Tall Women enjoyed a sold-out success in New York and has been staged across the country and around the world. It received Best Play awards from the New York Drama Critics Circle and Outer Critics Circle. Albee has written 25 plays and over the years has received an impressive number of awards including two Tony Awards. Albee also teaches at the School of Theatre of the University of Houston and gives lectures on his work at colleges around the US.

Bibliographic information

• Title: The zoo story: The death of Bessie Smith; The sandbox; three plays; Coward, McCann & Geoghegan Contemporary Drama
• Author: Edward Albee
• Contributor: Edward Albee
• Edition: 19
• Publisher: Coward-McCann, 1960
• Original from: the University of California
• Digitized: Jun 4, 2008
• Length: 158 pages
• Subjects: Drama / American / General; Drama / General