O'Neill: Son and Artist: Volume II

by Louis Scheaffer

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.

750 pages, Hardcover

First published August 19, 2002

Reviews

[Jason · Rating 5 out of 5]

An incredibly in depth look into the life of, arguably, America's greatest playwright. This volume picks up immediately after the opening of Beyond the Horizon on Broadway which closed volume I. Not only is this a brilliant biography of O'Neill, but by happenstance it's a who's who of the movers and shakers in publishing and Broadway of the time. This two volume biography is truly amazing.

[Jim Cullison · Rating 5 out of 5]

Outstanding bio of a great artist who repeated, nay surpassed, the parental malpractice which he mined so masterfully in his unforgettable work.