Eugene O'Neill was born in New York in 1888 and died in Boston in 1953. One of America's greatest playwrights, he was three times awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1936.

"Why do we continue to find Eugene O'Neill's family drama so moving? Partly because the play draws so closely on the author's own experience... [but] what also grips us is the tension between O'Neill's tight classical structure and the surging contradictions of family life" Guardian "Harrowing... the dramatic impact is shattering... The passage in which he describes his dirt-poor childhood is overpoweringly moving" Daily Telegraph "O'Neill keeps control with dry humour. This is an acute study of the behavioural ruts as well as the mercurial complexity of family relationships" Independent "Epic... a tale of monstrously corrupted intimacy" Herald