Biography Base Home Link To Us Search Biographies: Browse Biographies A B C D ... Z Eugene Gladstone O'Neill Biography Eugene (Gladstone) O'Neill (October 16, 1888 - November 27, 1953) was an American playwright best known for explorations into the darker aspects of the human condition. Frequently, his plays show people on the outer edges of society or begin in a situation of ennui and despair and move dramatically downwards to a grim finish.
While he was born in a New York City hotel, his family and his early life were intimately connected to New London, Connecticut. They had owned property in New London since before his birth, and he would have summered there with them virtually from his first memory until they made it the family home. As an adult, he was employed by the New London Telegraph and wrote his first 7 or 8 plays, two of them full-length while living there. (Connecticut College there maintains a major O'Neill archive, and the Eugene ONeill Theater Center, with its major facilities there and in the adjacent town of Waterford, fosters the development of new plays under the aegis of his name.)
In 1929 he moved to the Loire Valley in France where he lived in the Chateau du Plessis in St. Antoine-du-Rocher, Indre et Loire. | |
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