Editing Tennessee Williams (section)

==Death==
[[File:Tennessee williams will.jpg|thumb|right|upright=1|The first page of Williams' [[last will and testament]]]]
On February 25, 1983, Williams was found dead at age 71 in his suite at the [[Hotel Elysée]] in [[New York City]]. Chief Medical Examiner of New York City [[Elliot M. Gross]] reported that Williams had choked to death from inhaling the plastic cap of the type used on bottles of nasal spray or eye solution.<ref>
{{cite news | last=Daley | first=Suzanne | date=February 27, 1983 | title=Williams Choked on a Bottle Cap | url=https://www.nytimes.com/books/00/12/31/specials/williams-choked.html | newspaper=The New York Times | access-date=November 6, 2016 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171117180500/http://www.nytimes.com/books/00/12/31/specials/williams-choked.html | archive-date=November 17, 2017 | url-status=live | df=mdy-all }}
</ref> The report was later corrected on August 14, 1983, to state that Williams had been using the plastic cap found in his mouth to ingest [[barbiturates]]<ref>{{cite news |title=Drugs Linked to Death of Tennessee Williams |url=https://www.nytimes.com/books/00/12/31/specials/williams-drugs.html |work=[[The New York Times]] |date=August 14, 1983 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170226223629/http://www.nytimes.com/books/00/12/31/specials/williams-drugs.html |archive-date=February 26, 2017  }}</ref> and had actually died from a toxic level of [[Seconal]].<ref>{{Cite book|last=Lahr|first=John|title=Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh|publisher=W. W. Norton & Co.|year=2014|isbn=978-0-393-02124-0|location=New York|pages=587–588}}</ref>

He wrote in his will in 1972:<ref>{{cite book| title=Rethinking Literary Biography: A Postmodern Approach to Tennessee Williams| first=Nicholas| last=Pagan| publisher=Fairleigh Dickinson Univ Press| date=September 1993| pages=74–75| url=https://books.google.com/books?id=3hkn8Kn3UNQC&q=hart+crane| isbn= 978-0838635162}}</ref>

{{Blockquote
|text=I, Thomas Lanier (Tennessee) Williams, being in sound mind upon this subject, and having declared this wish repeatedly to my close friends-do hereby state my desire to be buried at sea. More specifically, I wish to be buried at sea at as close a possible point as the American poet [[Hart Crane]] died by choice in the sea; this would be ascrnatible [sic], this geographic point, by the various books (biographical) upon his life and death. I wish to be sewn up in a canvas sack and dropped overboard, as stated above, as close as possible to where Hart Crane was given by himself to the great mother of life which is the sea: the Caribbean, specifically, if that fits the geography of his death. Otherwise—whereever fits it [sic].
}}

However, his brother Dakin Williams arranged for him to be buried at [[Calvary Cemetery (St. Louis)|Calvary Cemetery]] in St. Louis, Missouri, where his mother is buried.<ref>Wilson, Scott. ''Resting Places: The Burial Sites of More Than 14,000 Famous Persons'', 3d ed.: 2 (Kindle Locations 51195–51196). McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers. Kindle Edition.</ref>

According to the ''[[New York Times]]'', "most of his estate was left to the [[University of the South]] in Sewanee, Tenn., with the bulk of it to remain in trust for his sister during her lifetime."  Rose Williams, Tennessee's sister, died in 1996 after many years in a mental institution in New York state; the university subsequently received about $7&nbsp;million, which supports a creative writing program.<ref>{{cite news| title=Rose Williams, 86, Sister And the Muse of Playwright| url=https://www.nytimes.com/1996/09/07/arts/rose-williams-86-sister-and-the-muse-of-playwright.html| last=Gussow| first=Mel| date=September 7, 1996| work=The New York Times| access-date=September 15, 2017| archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170913143124/http://www.nytimes.com/1996/09/07/arts/rose-williams-86-sister-and-the-muse-of-playwright.html| archive-date=September 13, 2017| url-status=live| df=mdy-all}}</ref>