The Hairy Ape | Author Biography

O'Neill was born on October 16, 1888, in New York City, the son of a successful touring actor. His early life was spent on the road, a difficult life for a child. He later criticized the family's constant travelling, suggesting that the stress led to his mother's addiction to drugs and also led to heavy drinking by the other family members. O'Neill started his college education at Princeton University, but that came to an abrupt end when he was dismissed for a prank. He married Kathleen Jenkins in 1909, producing a son, but divorced her only three years later. He then spent two years working as a sailor and manual laborer in South American ports.

Eugene O'Neill in the 1920s.
Eugene O'Neill in the 1920s.

In 1912 O'Neill was diagnosed with tuberculosis and sent to a sanitarium. Forbidden any strenuous physical activity, he resolved to get serious about his writing. During his recuperation, he became interested in playwrights, in particular the works of August Strindberg (Miss Julie). His contact with such literary works convinced him that he wanted to be an artist; he moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, and began studying at Harvard. He stayed there for a year and then moved on to Greenwich Village in New York. From there, he went to Provincetown, Massachusetts, and met a group of artists and writers that included playwright Susan Glaspell (Trifles) and radical journalist John Reed. With these writers, O'Neill started the Provincetown Players, an amateur theater company dedicated to producing independent works. O'Neill's first play, the one-act Thirst, was produced in 1916.

O'Neill wrote and was produced regularly throughout his life, earning a worldwide reputation as a premier playwright. He is noted not only for the quality of his work but for the considerable volume of his creations; during his nearly forty years as a professional playwright he produced over fifty works for the stage. Many of his plays are today considered hallmarks of American drama, including The Hairy Ape (1922), Desire under the Elms (1924), Mourning Becomes Electra (1931), The Iceman Cometh (1946), and A Moon for the Misbegotten (1957). Of the many accolades bestowed upon him, he received four Pulitzer Prizes—for Beyond the Horizon (1920), Anna Christie (1922), Strange Interlude (1928), and Long Day's Journey into Night (1957)—and, in 1936, a Nobel Prize for literature.

O'Neill's stature is such that he is regarded as one of America's greatest dramatists, although there were periods during which his work was not held in such high regard. Critical and popular opinion turned firmly to the positive with the 1956 debut of Long Day's Journey into Night, an autobiographical work that frankly examines the dysfunction of the O'Neill family. Due to the sensitive nature of the material, the playwright stipulated in his will that the play not be produced until after his death. The emotional power of Long Day's Journey prompted a re-examination of O'Neill's earlier work, earning him newfound appreciation among theatergoers and critics.

Despite the great number of works he saw produced during his life, O'Neill died with a number of unfinished or unproduced plays, including a cycle he was completing at the time of his death. A great number of his latter writings—like Long Day's Journey—were of a personal nature, and O'Neill ordered them destroyed before his death. A handful of these plays were spared, however, and the collections The Unknown O'Neill (1988) and Ten "Lost" Plays (1995) resurrected the playwright's unpublished work for future reading and production.

O'Neill remarried twice in his life, in 1918 to writer Agnes Boulton (a union that produced two children) and in 1929 to the actress Carlotta Monterey. He died from complications of pneumonia on November 27, 1953, in Boston, Massachusetts.