Eugene O’Neill (Cyclopedia of World Authors)

The American playwright Eugene Gladstone O’Neill is often regarded as the most important twentieth century writer for the theater. He was the son of the popular melodramatic actor James O’Neill and his wife, Ellen (Ella) Quinlan O’Neill. In O’Neill’s posthumous and frankly autobiographical play Long Day’s Journey into Night (completed by 1941 but neither published nor produced until 1956) the father appears as an improvident bohemian, lavish in speculation and with boon companions but parsimonious and unsatisfactory as the head of a family. The mother appears as a...

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