Eugene O'Neill: Complete Plays 1913–1920

Complete Plays #1

by Eugene O'Neill

The only American dramatist awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, Eugene O’Neill wrote with poetic expressiveness, emotional intensity, and immense dramatic power. This Library of America volume (the first in a three-volume set) contains 29 plays he wrote between 1913, when he began his career, and 1920, the year he first achieved Broadway success.

Many of O’Neill’s early plays are one-act melodramas whose characters are caught in extreme situations. Thirst and Fog depict shipwreck survivors, The Web a young mother trapped in the New York underworld, and Abortion the aftermath of a college student’s affair with a stenographer.

His first distinctive works are four one-act plays about the crew of the tramp steamer Glencairn that render sailors’ speech with masterful faithfulness. Bound East for Cardiff, In the Zone, The Long Voyage Home, and The Moon of the Caribbees portray these “children of the sea” as they watch over a dying man, sail though submarine-patrolled waters, take their shore leave in a London dive, and drink rum in a moonlit tropical anchorage.

In Beyond the Horizon Robert Mayo begins a tragic chain of events by abandoning his dream of a life at sea, choosing instead to marry the woman his brother loves and remain on his family farm. The sea in “Anna Christie” is both “dat ole devil” to coal barge captain Chris Christopherson and a source of spiritual cleansing to his daughter Anna, an embittered prostitute. When a swaggering stoker falls in love with her, Anna becomes the apex of a three-sided struggle full of enraged pride, grim foreboding, and stubborn hope. Both of these plays won the Pulitzer Prize and helped establish O’Neill as a successful Broadway playwright.

The Emperor Jones depicts the nightmarish journey through a West Indian forest of Brutus Jones, a former Pullman porter turned island ruler. Fleeing his rebellious subjects, Jones confronts his violent deeds and the tortured history of his race in a series of hallucinatory episodes whose expressionist quality anticipates many of O’Neill’s later plays.

Genres: Plays, Drama, Fiction, Literature, American, Classics, Theatre

1107 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 1988

About the author

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.

Reviews

[withdrawn · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great experience. Starting with O'Neill's early, very bad, attempts at writing plays through an arduous process of development. The final plays in the book, especially Anna Christie and The Emporer Jones are showing some of the strengths that come out in O'Neill's mature works. I shall be starting in volumes 2 and 3 of the set to get to the end of his career. This is proving to be a very enjoyable project. I have been a fan of O'Neill for decades but only now am I getting to know him.

[Kevin · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is probably more than anyone should read of what the author himself wished suppressed -- unless you are after an up-close look at how much a writer needs to produce before there is anything worth paying attention to or unless there is comfort in noting that progress in not linear, but full of backsliding and unaccountable leaps forward.

[Mshelton50 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read the one-act play, "The Long Voyage Home," pp. 507-23. Brief, but very affecting.

[Holland · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read:

Fog
Bound East for Cardiff
In the Zone
Ile
The Long Voyage Home
The Moon over the Caribbees
The Rope
Beyond the Horizon
“Anna Christie”
The Emperor Jones

[Martin Bihl · Rating 3 out of 5]

A Wife For Life, The Web, Thirst, Recklessness, Warnings, Fog, Bread and Butter, Bound East for Cardiff, Abortion, The Movie Man, Servitude, The Sniper, The Personal Equation - finished 04.29.21

Before Breakfast, Now I Ask You, In the Zone, Ile, The Long Voyage Home, The Moon of the Caribbees, The Rope, Beyond the Horizon, Shell Shock, The Dreamy Kid, Where the Cross is Made - finished 05.28.22

The Straw, Chris Christophersen, Gold, "Anna Christie", The Emperor Jones - finished 03.28.23

[Jim]

I read a couple of the plays here. Its not my favorite thing to read. Especially from that time period where the dialogue is overly dramatic and likely contrived based on stereotypes. I think his later works are where he received the most acclaim.

[j_ay]

A Wife for a Life ****o
The Web ****o
Thirst ****o
Recklessness ****o
Warnings
Bread and Butter
Bound East for Cardiff

[Scott · Rating 3 out of 5]

This first volume (of three) of O’Neill’s complete plays ends on a strong note with “Anna Christie” and “The Emperor Jones” but it took O’Neill (and will take the reader) a while to get to that point. He shows considerable improvement over the course of the period covered here but then his earliest efforts leave a lot of room for improvement. This would be a stronger showing if not all of his earliest efforts had been included.