O'Neill, Son and Artist

O'Neill, Son and Artist brings Louis Sheaffer's monumental biography of America's foremost playwright to a poignant, dramatic conclusion. Together with the previous volume, O'Neill, Son and Playwright, hailed by Brooks Atkinson as "an extraordinary book" and by Eric Bentley as "an achievement at once scholarly and literary," Sheaffer's biography now stands complete as the most authoritative study ever written about the life of Eugene O'Neill.

Based on many sources hitherto unknown or inaccessible, in addition to all the established standard sources. O'Neill, Son and Artist catches the turmoil of O'Neill's private life and illuminates how it shaped and haunted his artistic achievements. Sheaffer introduces fresh material uncovered during seven years of research that recounts O'Neill's personal life in intimate, harrowing detail: the deaths of his family, one by one in rapid succession; the bouts with liquor that nearly killed him; his manic temperament and insatiable restlessness; his acute discomfort in the role of father and the disastrous effect it had on his children; his Strindbergian marriage to Carlotta Monterey, characterized by total dependence and often enough deep hatred on both sides; his later illness, which left his unable to write or dictate, but with a mind at the height of its artistic and intellectual powers.