Eugene O’Neill, (born Oct. 16, 1888, New York, N.Y., U.S.—died Nov. 27, 1953, Boston, Mass.), U.S. playwright. The son of a touring actor, he spent an itinerant youth as a seaman, heavy drinker, and derelict, then began writing plays while recovering from tuberculosis (1912). His one-act Bound East for Cardiff (1916) was produced by the experimental Provincetown Players, which also staged his other early plays (1916–20). Beyond the Horizon was produced on Broadway in 1920, earning him his first Pulitzer Prize. Enormously prolific, he often wrote about tortured family relationships and the conflict between idealism and materialism. Soon recognized as a major dramatist, he became widely translated and produced. His many plays of the 1920s include The Emperor Jones (1921), The Hairy Ape (1922), Anna Christie (1922; Pulitzer Prize), Desire Under the Elms (1925), The Great God Brown (1926), and Strange Interlude (1928; Pulitzer Prize). Among his later plays are Mourning Becomes Electra (1931), Ah! Wilderness (1933; his only comedy), The Iceman Cometh (1946), and the autobiographical Long Day’s Journey into Night (produced 1956; Pulitzer Prize), considered his masterpiece. O’Neill was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1936, the first U.S. playwright so honoured.
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