Eugene O'Neill, 1888-1953
Biographical note
American playwright, and Nobel laureate in Literature. His plays are among the first to introduce into American drama the techniques of realism, associated with Russian playwright Anton Chekhov, Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen, and Swedish playwright August Strindberg. His plays were among the first to include speeches in American vernacular and involve characters on the fringes of society, engaging in depraved behavior, where they struggle to maintain their hopes and aspirations, but ultimately slide into disillusionment and despair. O'Neill wrote only one well-known comedy (Ah, Wilderness!). Nearly all of his other plays involve some degree of tragedy and personal pessimism.
Works
- Tomorrow [1917]
(O'Neill's only published short story tells of a suicide in a saloon where he lived in 1911. The character of Jimmy Tomorrow in "The Iceman Cometh"--see below--is also based on this character.)
Full-length plays
- Bread and Butter [1914]
- Servitude [1914]
- The Personal Equation [1915]
- Now I Ask You [1916]
- Beyond the Horizon [1918 - Pulitzer Prize, 1920]
- The Straw [1919]
- Chris Christophersen [1919]
- Anna Christie [1920 - Pulitzer Prize, 1922]
- The Emperor Jones [1920]
- Diff'rent [1921]
- The First Man [1922]
- The Hairy Ape [1922]
- The Fountain [1923]
- The Spook Sonata [1923]
- Marco Millions [1923-25]
- All God's Chillun Got Wings [1924]
- Welded [1924]
- Desire Under the Elms [1925]
- Lazarus Laughed [1925-26]
- The Great God Brown [1926]
- Strange Interlude [1928 - Pulitzer Prize]
- Dynamo [1929]
- Mourning Becomes Electra [1931] A Trilogy comprising Homecoming, The Hunted, and The Haunted
- Ah, Wilderness! [1933]
- Days Without End [1933]
- The Iceman Cometh [written 1939, published 1940, first performed 1946]
- Hughie [written 1941, first performed 1959]
- Long Day's Journey Into Night [written 1941, first performed 1956 - Pulitzer Prize 1957]
- A Moon for the Misbegotten [written 1941-1943, first performed 1947]
- A Touch of the Poet [completed in 1942, first performed 1958]
- More Stately Mansions [second draft found in O'Neill's papers, first performed 1967]
- The Calms of Capricorn [published in 1983]
One-act plays
- The Glencairn Plays [which all feature characters on the fictional ship Glencairn -- filmed together as
The Long Voyage Home:]
- Bound East for Cardiff [1914]
- In The Zone [1917]
- The Long Voyage Home [1917]
- Moon of the Caribbees [1918]
- A Wife for a Life [1913]
- The Web [1913]
- Thirst [1913]
- Recklessness [1913]
- Warnings [1913]
- Fog [1914]
- Abortion [1914]
- The Movie Man: A Comedy [1914 ]
- The Sniper [1915]
- Before Breakfast [1916]
- Ile [1917]
- The Rope [1918]
- Shell Shock [1918]
- The Dreamy Kid [1918]
- Where the Cross Is Made [1918]
