Eugene O'Neill is one of the best-known American playwrights, and received numerous accolades throughout his lengthy career. He is best categorized as a playwright in the realist school, and is credited with bringing realism, a dramatic technique initially employed by the European playwrights Anton Chekhov and Henrik Ibsen, to the United States. He often wrote about Americans living in desperate conditions, and his play Long Day's Journey into Night is considered one of the greatest American plays of all time.
O'Neill was born in New York City, at a hotel called the Barrett House, the son of Irish immigrants, James O'Neill and Mary Ellen Quinlan. His father was an actor, and so was...