Synopses & Reviews
The most lauded playwright in American history, Eugene O'Neill (1888-1953) won four Pulitzer Prizes and a Nobel Prize for a body of work that includes The Iceman Cometh, Mourning Becomes Electra, Desire Under the Elms, and Long Day's Journey into Night. His life, the direct source for so much of his art, was one of personal tumult from the very beginning. The son of a famous actor and a quiet, morphine-addicted mother, O'Neill had experienced alcoholism, a collapse of his health, and bouts of mania while still a young man. Based on years of extensive research and access to previously untapped sources, Sheaffer's authoritative biography examines how the pain of O'Neill's childhood fed his desire to write dramas and affected his artistically successful and emotionally disastrous life.
Synopsis
The turbulent, often tragic life of America's greatest playwright, Eugene O'Neill (1888-1953) is laid bare in this acclaimed and insightful biography. Based on previously unknown sources, numerous interviews, and original archival research, this two-volume work illumines a complex, elusive man whose life was as storm-tossed as any of his plots.
Here is O'Neill's troubled childhood; his battles with tuberculosis and alcoholism; the deaths of his family members in rapid succession; his tortured relationships with his wife and children; and his remarkable professional career and lasting impact, culminating in four Pulitzer Prizes for masterpieces like Long Day's Journey Into Night (1957) and Anna Christie (1922), and the Nobel Prize for literature in 1936.
Synopsis
The turbulent, often tragic life of America's greatest playwright, Eugene O'Neill, is laid bare in this acclaimed and insightful biography
Synopsis
Includes bibliographical references and index.