Eugene O’Neill was a popular American playwright who won the Nobel prize for literature in 1936. Apart from that, he won three Pulitzer prizes for his dramas Beyond the Horizon (1920), Anna Christie (1922), and Strange Interlude in 1928. Heis autobiographical drama Lond Day’s Journey into Night was published posthumously in 1956 and it won the Pulitzer prize in 1957. Thus, Eugene O’Neill is the only such author who won four Pulitzer prizes and a Nobel prize for literature. Eugene was born on October 16, 1888, and he died on November 27, 1953, at the age of 65. He attended Princeton University for his graduation but was thrown out after the first year for throwing a beer bottle into the window of a professor, allegedly Woodrow Wilson, who later became the President of the United States.
O’Neill enjoyed marine life and he spent many years at the sea during which he suffered alcoholism, depression, and dereliction, yet, his love for the sea didn’t cease. Many of his plays include sea life as a theme. In 1912, he suffered a contagious attack of Tuberculosis and was sent to a sanatorium when he decided to invest his time in writing. He wrote some of his plays during his time in the sanatorium. In 1916, he went to Provincetown town for his summer vacation where he met Susan Keating Glaspell. Eugene read one of his plays titled Bound East for Cardiff for Susan Glaspell and she liked his writing style. Later on, many of Eugene O’Niel’s early plays were performed by the Provincetown town players.
His first published play was Beyond the Horizon which was first performed on Broadway in 1920. The play got a huge success and was declared the winner of the Pulitzer prize for the drama of 1922. Eugene O’Neill was deeply influenced by Swedish playwright, novelist, and poet Johan August Strindberg and he mentioned this influence during his Nobel prize acceptance speech. His other important works include Emperor Jones (1920), The Hairy Ape (1922), Desire Under the Alms (1924), and The Iceman Cometh (1939). While most of his plays and dramas depict the themes involving characters on the fringes of society struggling to maintain their dignity and aspirations and thus involve tragic pessimism, he wrote some comedies too and one such was Ah Wilderness which was first performed in 1933. It differs from a typical O'Neill play in its happy ending for the central character, and depiction of a happy family in turn of century America.
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