Margins
Early Plays book cover
Early Plays
2001
First Published
3.86
Average Rating
448
Number of Pages
Now collected for the first time in a single volume, this selection of Eugene O'Neill's seminal early work was written between 1914 and 1921 and produced for the stage between 1916 and 1922. The majority of the plays gathered here are heavily influenced by Freud, Nietzsche, Strindberg, German expressionism, and the radical leftist politics O'Neill was involved in during his youth. Included in this unique collection is the little-known and underappreciated play The Straw, which draws on O'Neill's confinement in the Gaylord Farm Sanatorium. This edition includes an illuminating critical introduction by Jeffrey H. Richards.
Avg Rating
3.86
Number of Ratings
28
5 STARS
25%
4 STARS
39%
3 STARS
32%
2 STARS
4%
1 STARS
0%
goodreads

Author

Eugene O'Neill
Eugene O'Neill
Author · 56 books

American playwright Eugene Gladstone O'Neill authored Mourning Becomes Electra in 1931 among his works; he won the Nobel Prize of 1936 for literature, and people awarded him his fourth Pulitzer Prize for Long Day's Journey into Night , produced in 1956. He won his Nobel Prize "for the power, honesty and deep-felt emotions of his dramatic works, which embody an original concept of tragedy." More than any other dramatist, O'Neill introduced the dramatic realism that Russian playwright Anton Chekhov, Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen, and Swedish playwright August Strindberg pioneered to Americans and first used true American vernacular in his speeches. His plays involve characters, who, engaging in depraved behavior, inhabit the fringes of society, where they struggle to maintain their hopes and aspirations but ultimately slide into disillusionment and despair. O'Neill wrote Ah, Wilderness! , his only comedy: all his other plays involve some degree of tragedy and personal pessimism.

548 Market St PMB 65688, San Francisco California 94104-5401 USA
© 2025 Paratext Inc. All rights reserved