Eugene O’Neill

Biography

Eugene Gladstone O'Neill (1888–1953) was an American playwright and Nobel Prize laureate who is widely considered the father of American drama. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1936 and four Pulitzer Prizes for Drama. O'Neill's plays broke radically with the melodramatic conventions of earlier American theater, introducing psychological realism, expressionism, and tragic vision to the American stage. His major works include Long Day's Journey into Night, The Iceman Cometh, Mourning Becomes Electra, and The Hairy Ape. O'Neill's plays explore alienation, addiction, family dysfunction, and the search for meaning with unflinching honesty.