The period in which Williams wrote the stories for Hard Candy were contemporaneous with the staging of A Streetcar Named Desire (1948) with his emergence as “America’s most important playwright.”[3]
The years 1948-1952 were a “golden age” for Williams, both personally and professionally.[4] Literary critic and biographer Gore Vidal termed 1948 Williams’ “ annus mirabilis"[5]
Literary critic Dennis Vannatta cautions that “although this period produced a bright flowering of his short fiction, not every story written during this time is first-rate.”[6]
In March 1954 Williams noted in a letter that he was "pulling together a short-long play based on the characters in "Three Players."[7] The play was Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.
The 1967 paperback edition, dedicated to Jane and Paul Bowles, notes that the title piece, "Hard Candy," is a later version of "The Mysteries of the Joy Rio," yet both stories are included, despite employing the same theme and the same setting, because the accounts are so different.[8]
Footnotes
^Vannatta, 1988 p. 133: Bibliography: Primary sources
^Williams, 1985 pp. 571-574: Bibliographical Notes
^Vidal, 1985 p. xix And: p. xxv: “[T[he great period, 1945-1952, when all the ideas for the plays were either in his head as stories - or on the stage itself.”
